From chatGPT:

Your writing is already clear and articulate, with just a few grammatical, stylistic, and structural adjustments that would enhance its flow and native-sounding polish. Here’s a revised version with improvements in clarity, punctuation, tense consistency, and sentence structure:

 

 

 

I’ve written stories and novels in Chinese, and I plan to self-translate them into English. I’m looking for a native English speaker to review and possibly edit my translations. To give you a sense of the type of stories I write, here is an excerpt. The title of this story is “The Recommendation Letter.”

 

Tingting Li sat on the sofa in her corner office. Sunlight streamed through the Venetian blinds, casting striped patterns on her hair, her arms, and the laptop in front of her. She was so absorbed in reading that she didn’t notice the secretary standing at the door.

 

Tingting had been Chair of the Department for two months and was busy every day. Early that morning, she had attended a meeting about the challenges women face in academia — how to combat the leaky pipeline effect, get your talents recognized, and balance career and family, etc. Tingting shared her own experience as a student, then a researcher, and finally a leader in STEM.

 

Afterwards, she attended a routine meeting with the Dean and several department chairs. The Dean asked about the progress of recruitment in each department; he also complained about some new campus rules regarding the hiring process and how sexual harassment cases should be handled. After that, she chaired the department’s faculty meeting, whose agenda included personnel changes, course modifications, various programs and projects, and special circumstances and emergencies.

 

She then ate a banana for lunch, taught a graduate class, and returned to her office to meet with a doctoral student — an innocent-looking girl on the verge of tears, who harbored serious doubts about her research project. Tingting patiently comforted her, explaining that she herself had had similar doubts years ago. She encouraged the student to continue pursuing the direction they had already decided on.

 

Professor Li had a passion for scientific research and was also happy to mentor students. Serving as Chair was not a welcome distraction, and she had been reluctant to take on the role until persuaded by several senior colleagues. They argued that a young and accomplished woman serving as Department Chair would not only provide a role model for female students and staff, but also help present a progressive image of the department — and even the entire discipline — to outsiders. It would signal that a field dominated by men for a hundred years was finally entering a new era.

 

Tingting agreed and became Chair. In this new role, she worked just as diligently as she did in research and teaching.

 

 

 

Let me know if you’d like help translating or editing more excerpts — happy to assist!