Why can English become the only scientific language? |

In the 19th century, there were many languages ​​used for scientific communication. Although unified languages ​​such as Esperanto later emerged, English became the lingua franca of the scientific community in the late 20th century.

Gorkin, author of "The Tower of Babel of Science: A History of Western Scientific Language" (Science and Technology Press, January 2022), said: "The purpose of writing this book is not to show off the unique status of English at the moment, but to make English users reflect on the sacrifices that non-native English speakers continue to make in order to keep this system running ."

Written by Yang Jintao

In 1793, the British delegation led by Macartney arrived in Beijing, marking the first official contact between China and Britain . You may not imagine that at that time, neither country could find a translator who was proficient in both Chinese and English, so all communication had to be mediated by Latin . One of the results was that the list of gifts prepared by Macartney was translated beyond recognition - the most expensive "celestial globe" that could observe the orbit of celestial bodies such as the earth was written as "Da Jia Zai" in the Chinese translation, and was accompanied by the Latin transliteration "Xiyin Bu Lani Da Liong". These two confusing names obviously made it difficult for Qianlong to arouse his interest in Western science .

From this story, we can see that at the end of the 18th century, Latin was much more popular than English, and the gap between different languages ​​may greatly affect the accuracy of scientific communication. Michael Golkin, a professor of history at Princeton University, wrote the book "Scientific Babel: A History of Western Scientific Languages", which studies how English defeated French, German, Russian, Esperanto, Ido and many other rivals after the decline of Latin and became the common language in the scientific community .

Early coexistence of multiple scientific languages

The "Tower of Babel" in the title comes from a story in the Bible, which says that humans spoke the same language a long time ago. They wanted to build a tower of Babel that would lead to heaven. To stop this plan, God made humans in different places speak different languages, so that they could no longer communicate with each other and work together to do one thing. Then " Scientific Tower of Babel " can be understood as the process of scientists from different countries speaking different languages ​​trying to find a common language to facilitate communication.

Science is all-encompassing. Physics, chemistry, biology and other specific disciplines have different language problems. It is impossible to explain all of them in one book. Therefore, Gorkin uses the chemistry that he is familiar with as a clue to tell readers the story of the "Tower of Babel of Science". The first major case brought about by the language barrier in chemistry is the dispute over the invention of the periodic law of elements . The word "periodic" in the paper of Russian chemist Mendeleev was mistranslated as "stufenweise" by the German "Chemical Magazine", so the honor of discovering the periodic law of elements was almost taken away by German chemist Meyer who did the same research.

Mendeleev believed that his interpretation of the periodic law of elements had already been published in the Journal of the Russian Chemical Society, and that the translation error of the German abstract could not affect the ownership of the discovery. Mayer argued that Russian was not a scientific language, and that works written in it were not scientific literature , so Mendeleev's paper could not be used as the basis for his first discovery of the periodic law of elements. Although the debate ended with Mayer's death, it also made Russian scientists realize that Russian must be reformed to make it more suitable for scientific expression.

The recognized scientific languages ​​at that time were English, French and German . From 1880 to 1910, the three languages ​​each accounted for about 30% of scientific publications. Gorkin called them the "Big Three". During this period, as Mendeleev's influence continued to expand, the status of Russian chemistry also rose, and some Western chemists were forced to use dictionaries to read papers written in Russian. Between the two world wars, nationalism emerged, and scientists from the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Hungary and other countries also insisted on writing papers in their own languages.

If a large part of the limited time in life is spent learning at least three languages, it will inevitably reduce the time available for scientific research. French logician Louis Couturet accurately expressed this contradiction: "In order to understand the specific scientific work and research that interests them, all scholars must be proficient in several languages; but in order to become polyglots, they must give up all other research, which will make them lack professional knowledge."

To save time, create a new language

According to statistics, there are more than 5,600 languages ​​in the world, the main ones of which include English, Spanish, German, French, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese. Is it possible to create a new language that can be used by people all over the world?

In 1887, the Polish Jew Zamenhof invented an auxiliary language with the help of the Eurasian language family and named it " Esperanto ". In 1904, the Esperanto community founded the "International Science Review" and entered the scientific field. Mendeleev's paper on the "ether" hypothesis was translated into Esperanto and published in this journal. The "International Science Review" was supported by many scientists, including Nobel Prize winners Henri Becquerel (French physicist) and William Ramsay (British chemist).

While Esperanto was trying to expand its influence in the scientific community, another artificial language, Ido , was rising rapidly. Ido was called "purified Esperanto," and its supporters claimed that "it has advantages over other languages ​​and is based on rational scientific principles" and "it is the only language suitable for scientific use and has been adapted to scientific terminology."

There are two main supporters of Ido. One is Kuthurat mentioned above, and the other is German physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, who donated $40,000 (equivalent to more than $1 million today) to promote Ido immediately after winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909. Ostwald also worked to establish a set of Ido inorganic chemical nomenclature.

Esperanto and Ido were fighting each other, and a real war broke out . Scientists were divided into the two camps of the Allied Powers and the Central Powers. The 10th Esperanto Annual Conference originally scheduled to be held in Paris in 1914 was cancelled, and the 11th Annual Conference was held in the then neutral United States, with less influence than before. The number of Esperanto publications dropped from more than 100 to less than 30.

Also in 1914, Kuturat died in a car accident, and the first Ido conference, originally scheduled for September in Luxembourg, was postponed. Ostwald betrayed Ido, and seeing Germany's success on the European continent, he turned to support a "simplified German based on scientific and technological principles" - " World German ". Ostwald believed that German would dominate the world.

Many factors make English the winner

The development of history was exactly the opposite of Ostwald's expectations. Germany was defeated in World War I and World War II, and the status of German in the scientific community plummeted, no longer standing on equal footing with English and French. At the same time, the United States replaced Britain as the leader of the English-speaking world , and American scientists published a large number of scientific papers to expand the influence of English.

However, English still has a long way to go before it can win without a fight. The Soviet Union used Russian to fight against English during the Cold War , believing that "Russian is great, rich, and powerful, and it is the tool of the world's most advanced culture." In 1958, the content of the American journal Chemical Abstracts came from 50 languages, of which Russian content accounted for 17%, which was far less than English's 50.5%, but exceeded the total of German's 10% and French's 6%. In 1970, the proportion of Russian content reached 23%.

English and Russian became the most important scientific languages . Scientists from the two major camps, the United States and the Soviet Union, had three options if they wanted to understand each other's scientific research results: one was to learn each other's language, which was difficult, time-consuming and labor-intensive; the second was to use artificial languages ​​such as Esperanto and Ido, but this trend had passed; the third was through translation, as there was too much content to translate and the cost was too high.

Inspired by computer technology , the Soviet Union and the United States both came up with the fourth path - developing machine translation . After investing a large amount of money and achieving some results, the Americans found that machine translation was not feasible , "language cannot be simplified into algorithmic rules because humans constantly introduce contexts with serious semantics and meanings." So what suggestions did American computer experts, language experts, and translation experts give? Start from the complex and simplify, and let scientists learn Russian on their own.

English really reached its peak after the end of the Cold War . Among all scientific publications from 1980 to 1996, English rose from 74.6% to 90.7%, while Russian fell from 10.8% to 2.1%. "Scientific Babel" points out that English has many obvious shortcomings , such as "many words cover similar concepts" and "more and more grammatical irregularities"; its advantages are rich scientific vocabulary and more unified scientific English style. Of course, political influence is especially indispensable. "Geopolitical developments have led to the continuous development of American science as the United States' strength has increased, and the status of English has also continued to rise."

Will the status of English change in the future?

At the end of the book, Gorkin discussed whether English will be replaced as the only scientific language , how Chinese can play a greater role in the future, and other issues. This echoes his purpose of writing this book, which is not to show off the unique status of English at the moment, but to let English users reflect on "the sacrifices that non-native English speakers continue to make to keep the system running." Because in Gorkin's view, "the biggest driving force behind the rise of English does not come from native English speakers, but from people who are not native English speakers but speak English (most of the world's scientists and engineers), who use this language to reach the widest audience."

Even with the development of computer and AI technology, machine translation is still not satisfactory. If we want to communicate better with the world, especially to engage in scientific research, we still have to start by climbing the "Scientific Babel Tower". Fortunately, we no longer need to learn German, French, or Russian. It is enough to learn only English.

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