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English is now considered the common language, or 'lingua franca', of global science. All major scientific journals seemingly publish in English, despite the fact that their pages contain research from across the globe.
However, a new study suggests that over a third of new scientific reports are published in languages other than English, which can result in these findings being overlooked - contributing to biases in our understanding.
As well as the international community missing important science, language hinders new findings getting through to practitioners in the field say researchers from the University of Cambridge.
They argue that whenever science is only published in one language, including solely in English, barriers to the transfer of knowledge are created.
The Cambridge researchers call on scientific journals to publish basic summaries of a study's key findings in multiple languages, and universities and funding bodies to encourage translations as part of their 'outreach' evaluation criteria.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Monday January 02 2017, @04:19PM
To quote a comment from the past (https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=9684&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=improvedthreaded&cid=241469#commentwrap)
...but this time while on a thread that might still be active:
I have started thinking that Esperanto should be everyone's 2nd language, simply because it's so easy to learn yet seems ~"complete", and more importantly, has been shown to make learning other languages easier to the point that overall you learn, say, more French if you learn Esperanto first, than if one spent the entire time studying French. So learn whatever you would have learned as a 2nd language, for the 3rd, and you saved time and got farther, overall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Third-language_acquisition [wikipedia.org]). And it seems to me the easiest way for someone to better understand the grammar of their own native language, by seeing a simple & clean example.
I don't think aficionados usually see it as a replacement for a first (or native) language, though that has been done intentionally by some (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org], or search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] for "native").
Then there's the side benefit of being by far the cheapest effective global route to everyone being able to talk to and understand each other, even if haltingly. For some people, learning English is simply too hard. For the rest, it's still a very big effort, and Esperanto is extremely easy by comparison. In terms of global cost/benefit, Esperanto seems like a big win. And it's fun!
An excellent, persuasive explanation from Claude Piron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU [youtube.com]
(PS: There are other interesting constructed languages each with their pros & cons, but none with nearly the same amount of traction or interest as Esperanto. It's interesting to consider, given all that has been learned in the field so far, how to "optimize" a constructed human language, considering various factors like ease, familiarity, beauty, efficiency, computability, or whatever one sees as most important.)
(Score: 2) by nethead on Monday January 02 2017, @09:29PM
I learned BASIC as my second language. Now I'm screwed for any others.
How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?