Application of Back Translation to English Editing in Chinese Scientific Journals: Journal of Environmental and Occupational Medicine as an Example

English abstracts provide international researchers the most instant means to understand scientific research findings in China. The possibility of a published paper attracting international readers or even being cited would significantly increase by the quality of its English abstract, including grammatical correctness and accuracy of original ideas transferred. In view of the current low level of linguistic presentation and editing work in English abstracts published in academic journals in China, this paper focused on the use of back translation, a routine process in international translation practices, in English editing of Chinese scientific journals, and exemplified how it worked in the following aspects: identifying missing information in original texts, defining sentence structures, clarifying expression differences, improving accuracy in conveying the original information, and aiding Chinese expression revision.