I'm doing some English cleanup on a book written by someone whose first langauge isn't English. It's an interesting experience. Being completely lame at languages I'm automatically impressed by people who speak more than one, and writing a book in a foreign language is particularly amazing. And this is effectiviely what the author is doing - he's Austrian, so has very good English (as do most Europeans, unlike the British who, one the whole, are particularly (a)pathetic about learning foreign languages).

So, my role is to go through the chapters making sense of anything that doesn't. This means if I come across something I don't understand I have to work out what the author meant before I can change it. I also have to be careful not let my own writing style influence what I'm reading. I've already caught myself thinking "Hmm, I wouldn't have put it like that" over something that is perfectly well described, but just not in the way I'd describe it. I've done plenty of reviewing before, but never anything akin to editing. I wonder if editors who don't write have the same problems - how much of their own personality gets into their editing?