Re: Imperial oppression

On Apr 17, 3:26 am, Athel Cornish-Bowden <athel...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2008-04-16 00:44:42 +0200, "benli...@xxxxxxxxxx" <benli...@xxxxxxxxxx> said:



On Apr 16, 3:52 am, "Jens S. Larsen" <jens_s_lar...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ross Clark:

mb:
And yet this is precisely the situation in which most
researchers, teachers, students, and even schoolchildren find
themselves. They might speak any one of more than 6,000
languages used in the world today, but if they don't communicate
in English, then the sciences, especially the life sciences, are
closed to them.
This is a wild exaggeration. I'm sure schoolchildren around the
world are being taught elementary biology (and mathematics and
geography) in dozens if not hundreds of different languages. Not
in every single one of the 6,000, of course. And the further you
pursue your studies the narrower the range of languages gets.
Nevertheless, professional scientific communication (journal
articles, monographs, conferences) continues to take place in
French, Spanish, Japanese and other languages.

Which journals about natural science in other languages than English
would an American university library subscribe to?

I was curious enough to search "Chemistry-Periodicals" in my
university's library. Out of about 150 titles I found about 50 in
languages other than English: (in descending order of numbers) German,
French, Latin, Russian, Italian, Swedish, Slovak, Croatian,
Macedonian, Finnish and Afrikaans.
Of course these are just titles (many journals are bilingually
titled), and don't tell you what languages the contents are in. If you
looked at this, as well as how often they are accessed, etc., English
might appear more dominant...

There is no doubt at all that it would, because chemistry journals with
English titles but non-English content are virtually non-existent,
whereas you can certainly find the opposite -- the French journal
Biochimie, for example, which until 1980 (approximately -- I haven't
checked the dates recently) published only in French, between 1980 and
1990 was bilingual, and now considers papers only in English. The
German journal Biochemisches Zeitschrift was reborn in 1969 as the
European Journal of Biochemistry: initially it accepted papers in
English, German or French, and during the first year or so under the
new name it was about 80% in English, with around 10% in each of German
and French. The German proportion decreased very rapidly (because
German authors already wanted their papers to be read in the US) and
had virtually disappeared by 1975; the French proportion decreased more
slowly, but had also largely disappeared by 1980. The journal (now
called FEBS Journal) is now entirely in English. The originally Dutch
journal Biochimica et Biophysica Acta has followed a very similar
progression. The Revue Roumaine de Biochimie is in neither Roumanian
nor French, but as you'd guess, it's in English. Etc., etc.: I'd bet
that virtually all the journals you mention above are, in practice,
written mainly or entirely in English.

The Egyptian Journal of Chemistry (which was taken for some reason by
the departmental library of the department where I once worked --
probably a free subscription) once (say around 1970) had the most
liberal language policy I've ever seen, something like "The journal
will accept papers in any language that can be written either with
Roman or with Arabic script", but that had also changed by about 1980,
and papers had to be in English (as indeed they virtually all already
were).
--
athel

Thanks for this information. I have the feeling that some Chinese
journals in our library are listed only with English title but contain
many papers in Chinese. Not sure if this applies anywhere else.

Ross Clark
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Imperial oppression
    ... geography) in dozens if not hundreds of different languages. ... French, Spanish, Japanese and other languages. ... languages other than English: German, ... Of course these are just titles (many journals are bilingually ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: How to prime kids to learn 3+ languages?
    ... multi-lingual environment and become fluent in multiple languages. ... They learnt English, French, and Arabic. ... When we "went" to a shoe shop, they switched to French, ... later, they still speak English and French well, and they have learnt ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: OT: Screening MoFos
    ... English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Cantonese and Urdu. ... I interviewed one lass years ago and she'd put on her CV fluent English ... 'fluent' in that many languages, but it depends on what you mean by ...
    (uk.rec.motorcycles)
  • Re: Rick Perry & The Man From Galilei
    ... DLI also rates the primary languages by difficulty. ... I am curious where English ... I find it odd that you would suggest that French is written roughly ... The verb is unchanged. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Multilingual jugglers: are there any out there?
    ... How many languages are you able to use? ... English and French ... when using their mother tongue. ...
    (rec.juggling)