TATSUYA AMANO: Embrace linguistic diversity Zoologist at the University of Queensland, Brisbane. As a native speaker of Japanese, I’ve struggled with language barriers. But science is struggling, too. Consider the field of conservation, in which much research is still conducted in the local language. In a 2016 study in PLoS Biology, my colleagues and I surveyed more than 75,000 biodiversity conservation papers that have been published in 2014 (T. Amano, J. P. González-Varo & W. J. Sutherland PLoS Biol. 29, e2000933; 2016). We found that 36% were published in a language other than English, which makes that information much less accessible to the wider world.
The dominance of English has created considerable bias in the scientific record. In a 2013 study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, we found that biodiversity databases were more complete in countries that had a relatively high proportion of English speakers (T. Amano & W. J. Sutherland Proc. Biol. Sci. 280, 20122649; 2013). In other words, biodiversity records are comparatively scant in countries where English is rarely spoken. As a result, our knowledge of large parts of the world’s biodiversity is much less robust than it could be.
We need to embrace linguistic diversity and to make a concerted effort to dig up scientific knowledge in languages other than English. That’s been a major part of my research at the University of Queensland. I’ve been looking for studies across the world that assess conservation interventions. So far, I’ve identified more than 600 peer-reviewed articles written in languages other than English. I’m building collaborations with native speakers of those languages to get a better sense of the information in the papers and to see how they complement or fill in the gaps in English-based knowledge.
I suspect that a lot of native English speakers view language barriers as a minor problem. They probably think that Google Translate can solve everything. But the technology isn’t there yet. You can’t run a scientific paper through a translation programme and get a meaningful result. We need to change our attitude to non-native English speakers. If you have the chance to evaluate a journal submission or a job application, think about the perspective that a non-native speaker can provide. And if you’re a non-native speaker, you can bring a diversity of opinion and approach to the international community. You should be very proud.
MONTSERRAT BOSCH GRAU: Improve English-language education
Director of in vitro studies at Sensorion in Montpellier, France. My PhD funding at the University of Girona in Spain included a ‘mobility budget’ to support international collaborative work. Thanks to that opportunity, between 2000 and 2002, I was able to spend a total of 12 months at a National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) lab in Montpellier. There, I had to learn two languages at the same time: English for work, and French for daily life. Not being able to communicate was frustrating. But I was also very alert and in a high-energy mode, because I had to move towards people: they wouldn’t come to me on their own because we didn’t speak the same language.
I had been taught English in secondary school, but not to a high level, and in Spain we don’t have English-language versions of television programmes. There was absolutely no English-language training available at my university. In France, there were courses to help foreign students learn French, but not English.
I tried to read a lot in English — not only scientific papers, but also literature. I was always looking for people to have informal conversations with in English. Because I was in France, most of my colleagues and friends were not from an English-speaking country, and we were learning English with each other. When we talked to a native speaker of English, we didn’t understand anything, especially if they were from the United Kingdom — we all found the British accent difficult. And many English speakers didn’t realize when they were speaking too fast. Some non-native English speakers would prefer to talk to other foreigners in English — it was easier.
A language is a tool for success. Mastering the way in which we speak and how we define concepts is an essential skill. We need a common language to communicate in science, and this is now English. That is a good thing, because English is perfect for science: it’s precise and straightforward. A good level of English will help you to get the job or the project that you want, in both academia and industry.
The language barrier has never stopped me from doing what I wanted to do. But speaking at conferences, writing papers and asking for fellowships in English is harder and demands more energy when you’re not a native speaker. You need to fight with the language.
At conferences, not speaking English perfectly is not a big problem: people will understand you. But there is a limit. Some people speak English poorly, and this can totally block communication. There is no subsequent scientific discussion, and we are missing the opportunity to share information and knowledge..
We need to improve English-language education before and during university. Having students do some research in another country, as I did, should be part of PhD programmes in every country.
Accept that sometimes you cannot be perfect when communicating in English, but do so anyway. Read books and watch television in English. Write all lab reports and conduct meetings in English. Ask your institute to offer English-language training. Ask your lab head to pay for a stay in a lab in another country during your PhD, or collaborate with other labs and move around. Travelling will improve your English, help you to understand other countries and ways of living, and open your mind.
MICHAEL GORDIN: A long and unfair history
Professor of modern and contemporary history at Princeton University, New Jersey, and author of Scientific Babel (Univ. Chicago Press, 2015). There’s nothing about English that makes it intrinsically better for science than any other language. Science could have gone just as far in Chinese or Swahili. But many economic and geopolitical forces made English the dominant language of research, for better or worse. Having a single global language of science makes the whole endeavour more efficient. There are around 6,000 languages in the world, today. If science were being conducted in all of them, a lot of knowledge would be lost. In the 1700s and 1800s, scientists in Europe often had to learn French, German and Latin to keep up with their fields. We’ve gained a lot by lowering the burden to just one language. But there’s also a lack of fairness. In countries where English isn’t spoken, you shut out everyone but the well-educated. We could be losing some really smart minds.
Over the centuries, scientists worldwide have adapted to using English, but the language has also adapted to science. English has acquired a vocabulary for concepts and processes. When a new field emerges, its terminology piggybacks on the existing vocabulary. In computer science, English terms such as ‘Internet’, ‘software’ and ‘cybernetics’ are now used almost universally. A lot of languages don’t have that history, so they don’t have the infrastructure of scientific vocabulary. If the world decided that Thai or Hindi should be the language of science, we’d have a lot of work to do to create a whole extra terminology.
People often ask me whether another language will someday take the place of English. I doubt it. English is an anomaly. We’ve never before had a single global language, and I don’t think that it will happen again. In the future — perhaps even in this century — science could split into three languages: English, Chinese and another language, such as Spanish, Portuguese or Arabic.
Even if every English-speaking scientist suddenly disappeared, English would still be the dominant language for a long time to come, because so much knowledge is already written in English. It’s here to stay for a while.
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