Science First or Economics First?<\/h2>\n
For budget-conscious researchers, the costs of translation into multiple languages is sometimes hard to justify. The more cost-effective and, to be blunt, a manageable solution is to stick with English and let the ESL readers figure out how to translate it into their local language.<\/p>\n
Such experience is often unfairly criticized as being marginally xenophobic. Scientific research claims to benefit the world, so why is so little attention paid to ensuring that the world can benefit from reading about it?<\/p>\n
Does Translation Place an Additional Burden?<\/h2>\n
With the growth of local open access journals<\/a> in non-English languages, the problem of availability of translated research work may soon be addressed. But the\u00a0traditional journals continue to publish in English and the local journals will not be able to compete with their citation volumes and corresponding rankings.<\/p>\n On that basis, ESL researchers seem to have no other option than to face the burden of learning a second language\u2014to a level of sophistication and competence to where the scientific nuance of their research can be fully translated. Tourist language courses just won\u2019t do.<\/p>\n The argument for the dominance of English in Science may now look weak in the face of global demographics, but the strength of the infrastructure remains undamaged.<\/p>\n The most highly ranked and prestigious journals<\/a> have developed their positions over time, and their perceived importance is unlikely to be overturned anytime soon.<\/p>\n Open access journals promise lower operating costs that should make country-specific journals more viable, but they will be too small to challenge the prestige of the so-called “legacy” journals.<\/p>\n Machine translation options such as Google Translate are still too rudimentary to be considered a viable option for the translation of online research journals that use very specific terminology. This leaves a English\u00a0translation service that specializes in scientific research<\/a> content as the best option to broaden the reach of your article or research paper<\/a>. This may seem unfair given that many authors are already embracing the processing charges required to get their work published in open access journals, but if your work is likely to be of interest to an audience that has neither the language skills nor access to the English version of your material, the additional expense should be regarded as a necessary investment. Therefore,\u00a0it’s better to look for a solution, rather than debating on why there is this dominance of English in science.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nFind Solutions First, Debate Later<\/h2>\n
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