caught in an editorrential downpour

Editing honest-to-god Chinglish is like reading with a child's thoughts in the midst of discovering for his or herself basic information about the outside world:

"Many of us may already learn from school book that Persian culture is one of the four ancient civilizations. But do you ever know that all splendid treasures belong to one Mideast country, today called Iran. As the cradle for human being’s culture and civilization, this ancient country was known as Persia until 1935. Over its 2,500- year distinguished history, Iran did pose great impacts for our global culture either in ancient time or today’s world. The ago-old “Silk Road” made different continents far away much more closed, no matter the west or the east. It was the “Silk Road” connecting Iran and China, largely enhancing economic and trade exchanges. These two different cultures did make their first spark since the time being."

Also, Chinglish just frankly works better--and you save a lot of time editing--if you just replace all the periods with exclamation marks:

Many of us may already learn from school book that Persian culture is one of the four ancient civilizations! But do you ever know that all splendid treasures belong to one Mideast country, today called Iran?!?!?? As the cradle for human being’s culture and civilization, this ancient country was known as Persia until 1935!!!!!!! Over its 2,500- year distinguished history, Iran did pose great impacts for our global culture either in ancient time or today’s world!!! The ago-old “Silk Road” made different continents far away much more closed, no matter the west or the east!111!!!! It was the “Silk Road” connecting Iran and China, largely enhancing economic and trade exchanges!!!!!!!!!!!!!! These two different cultures did make their first spark since the time being!!#$$%$%^$#*$&)@#(%^(*&$!!@!!

Wow, I am remarkably crass.

Full-disclosure: the selection above is just a taste of a 2,000 or so word article one of our more "ambitious" staff members tried to force into the magazine at the last second, well into the final design period and well past any semblance we had of a deadline, this is in addition to numerous prior rejections of the article from a series of superiors. Undettered! as this wayward "journo-in-training" was (numerous times overstepping his/her authority to plead his/her case to our English-less boss for the article to be in the mag) with the compromise "we" finally had to agree to (and by "we" I mean those of us trying to run a damn magazine) was to drop the mini-magnum opus into a 50-word blurb in the events section.

*Wipes hands.* Problem solved! Right?

This was on Thursday, issue went to print over the weekend... Let's just say I won't be surprised if the full article is in the March issue.

Huzzah!