Where has Hegemonic English
led us?
Some of the negative
consequences of English usage in Science and Technology within international
settings: The French example.
By
Charles Durand
Université de Technologie de Belfort-Montbéliard
(UTBM), Belfort, France
Tamkang International Conference on Globalization,
Education and Language
November 15-16, 2002
Tamsui, Taiwan
(e-mail
address in 2005 : Charles.Durand@auf.org)
Summary:
In the hard sciences
and in technology, when Powerpoint slides and transparencies
can compensate for the lack of fluency to present an experimental setup, a
pilot plant or a bunch of equations to model physical phenomena, English does
not seems to be much of an impediment for a non-native speaker but can we
really expect a top level scholar in psychology, in
social science, in history or in literature be able to present his research in
a fully effective way and in a manner as convincing and persuasive as if he was
conducting his talk in his own native tongue ? Of course not! The more
sophisticated the message is, the more its wording is important. Resorting to a
foreign language, which is never fully mastered can only distort, simplify and
degrade the quality of the message. It would be extremely naive to expect
international communication not to be limited by language barriers even though
people might resort to foreign tongues on their own volition.
In addition, language
is not neutral and translation implies switching over to a different system of
expression. The views, opinions and knowledge developed in one language may be
difficult to communicate in another language as the points of reference and
knowledge representations in the other language are different. Attempting to
express this knowledge in a language other than the one that served the
thinking process that put it together would deliver a half-baked incomplete or
mutilated information package. Attempting to reduce expression to a single
language is equivalent to destroying all expressions that are not native to
this tongue.
The beginning of the
twentieth century brought very profound breakthroughs in science and
mathematics. Inventions and technical applications of such discoveries
flourished. The free flow of scientific and technical information went
unhampered by multilingualism. On the contrary, it clearly seemed to have
boosted creativity. A scientist who gives up on his own native tongue to
conduct his work can never reach his full potential and, often, he will be
limited to technical contributions only. We have to realize that original
thoughts automatically entail the use of original modes of expression.
In addition, and in
complete opposition to what people are lead to believe in universities and
research labs, the trend toward the use of English only within the framework of
international communication in science and technology was not left to chance.
On the contrary, it is the result of deliberate planning and actions undertaken
by English-speaking countries with the collaboration of various foreign
governments, similar to what happened in the non-Russian Soviet republics to
impose the use of Russian which, from the highly specialized technical fields,
was to encroach gradually on the native languages used for industrial, cultural
and social activities in those countries.
The consequences of this policy will be
presented in the case of French science and technology.
In most industrialized
countries of continental western Europe, the elite is trying to promote a language
policy which aims at making English the only language to be used in all the
fields which are supposed to become of prime importance in the future, on the
ground that it is already needed for international communication and commercial
purposes. The establishment is trying to persuade whoever undertakes studies in
hard or applied sciences, in medicine, in economy, business or finance that
mastering the English language is a necessity. This phenomenon has even crept
into the practice of social sciences. However, when we look closer at this trend,
we notice that it does not match any public demand but that it is the result of
constant mind conditioning that originates from government agencies and private
companies which sometimes make English the only language to be used by their
white collar workers with the unofficial agreement of local authorities. This
trend that attempts to push aside local and sometimes major languages does not
originate from pragmatism but is deeply rooted in an ideology which has been
artificially implanted through a major mind conditioning effort. It is
justified by what looks to be down-to-earth, rational motives. A unique tongue
allows for international communication, reduces costs and efforts in the
“global” village that world society is supposed to become. Partitioning through
languages, like visas required for traveling, seems to result in isolation,
ignorance and useless repetitions.
This reasoning is
widespread and has a tremendous impact because it is simple and because it is
readily understood by simplistic minds. On the contrary, we will see that
know-how and expression are closely connected. Independence with respect to
language is an illusion. In science and technology, the hegemony of one
language leads to numerous problems but first, we need to re-examine two antagonistic
concepts about human languages. The first one, the one that seems to prevail
nowadays considers that language is a pure communication code and that, as
such, it can be 100% converted into another code through translation. As long
as this code allows its user to express himself in all
the situations that he can potentially imagine, qualitative differences do not
exist between two codes in this framework, from a semantic point of view,
whatever the grammar and syntax might be. For instance, if I say: “wôo pu pha
tha” in Chinese, which translates into “Me not fear
him”, in English, the English sentence “I do not fear him” is not different
from the Chinese version from a semantic view point, as long as it carries the
same information. In this model, all languages are equivalent and would confer
nothing special upon their users when compared to users of other languages. The
attitude and opinions of those who promote globalization are coherent with this
concept. It implies that the use of a unique and only language on a planetary
scale would not introduce significant differences – qualitative or quantitative
– with respect to the current situation, in the type of information we could
produce, but that it would result in tremendous savings and far better understanding
between the peoples of the world.
Another
language concept presents language as being more than a code, but as a
particular representation of reality. It is easy to notice, for instance,
that a translation is never perfect. Translating requires choosing the
structures and the words that come closest to reflect the original meaning.
This other concept implies that:
a)
What is being said can never be completely separated from how it is
said.
b)
Language is shaped by culture and the expression of this culture is the
language itself.
c)
It is impossible to distinguish the border between thought and the
coding of this thought by words.
d)
What can be expressed in a specific language cannot necessarily be expressed
in another, at least not in the same way and
e)
Everybody’s views are modeled and modulated through language.
Language
is the symbolic expression of reality but is reality the same for everybody? If formulations in different
languages were semantically equivalent, everything would be translatable. But
we know that it is impossible, in general, to translate oral jokes and puns.
It’s the same for poems and song lyrics, as we can see when we watch
foreign-made movies. We know that movies that are dubbed are not as good as
their original versions (as long as we can understand them, of course!).
Beyond
these observations that anyone can make, we notice that the semantic fields of
words and their closest equivalents in a foreign tongue overlap only partially.
That is why bilingual dictionaries always suggest several equivalents of a
foreign word. Of course, a “table”, a “fork” or a “spoon” will only have one
equivalent in most foreign languages, most likely. However, if one wants to
translate the English word “feeling” in French, we would have to use, depending
on context, “sensation“, “pressentiment“ or
“sentiment“. The verb “to achieve“ will either mean “accomplir“, “réaliser“, or “atteindre“. As a matter of fact, one needs to glance at any
bilingual dictionary to acknowledge such observations. We need not be
high-level linguists to realize that at the mere lexical level, word
semantics have contours that essentially depend on language and that a tongue
is associated to a PARTICULAR REPRESENTATION OF REALITY. Therefore, it is
easy to see in different languages seeds of different perceptions. However,
these observations can be pushed far beyond word semantics. The simple fact
that classical Chinese did not have the verb “to be” in its lexicon resulted in
a Chinese approach to philosophy that has little to do with the methods and
concerns of western philosophy whose prime focus, from Plato to Heidegger, was
a speculation on the essence of the beings[1] (not necessarily human). We
don’t need to explore the hopi,
one of the indigenous north-American languages, which does not use any tenses,
to notice that, in a language such as English, the adjective is systematically
positioned before the noun that it qualifies, which implies that the perception
of appearances comes before the perception of the nature of the object that is
being described. This, quite naturally, bears an influence on the behavior and
value system of English-speaking peoples...
The semantic field of
words representing abstractions is heavily dependent on the language being
used. There are few abstract concepts that are shared in exactly the same
fashion by peoples of different languages and cultures. The problem of finding
equivalents is not a problem of words but of different conceptual structures.
Of course, semantic fields also depend on contexts. In translation, lexicon and
syntax are often insufficient. One needs to take a look at the successive
errors brought about by translations in series to realize the magnitude of the
differences of perception that the use of different languages entails. For
instance, the Bible was first translated in ancient Greek and later in Latin,
then in French as well as other European languages. If we retranslate this
bible into Hebrew, the French Bible will simply carry a very different message
from the original one. We have another example of this with the United Nations
charter whose articles should be the same in their official English and French
versions. However, depending on the version we use, their interpretations might
be significantly different. Of course, translations depend heavily on the
cultural impregnation of the translators. Often, differences lie in emotional
and psycho-sociological interferences but, beyond, there is inherent difficulty
to recast expressions into the new mold of a new language. Therefore, language
generates specific mental representations. Thus, language goes well beyond a
simple communication code such as the code we could use to exchange information
on a computer network, for instance. Language is both a system of reference
and a system of expression that could not have reached its full development
without constant interaction from both. It is perfectly adapted to express, in
a symbolic fashion, the data generated by human activity as it can carry an infinity of expressive nuances reflecting universal
psychological characteristics. Therefore, language plays an important role in
situations that are not in any way related to communication needs, such as
individual thought, which is not possible on a deep level without it.
It is interesting here
to mention that the upcoming conference entitled: “Les enjeux
de l’intraduisible[2]” (“Cultural Issues raised by the
Untranslatable”), that will be held in Paris in a few days, will focus on the
language-specific concepts, which cannot be exported through translated
materials. Beyond the fact that politicians and the press may have,
sometimes, some interests in cultivating differences through certain
stereotypes, field experience shows nevertheless that some cultural gaps cannot
be bridged without a deep and mutual understanding of the languages involved.
We always have
consciously associated words with their designations but the exploration of
existing associations between words and perceptions requires special awareness,
because we usually remain unconscious of their existence. Then, we realize that
science and culture cannot be separated in spite of the fact that science is a
universal endeavor. It is the usage of Italian that created Dante’s poetic
theology. It is through the German language that Luther’s existentialism
emerged. It is the French language that allowed Rabelais and Montaigne to found the French version of the freedom
concept.
We tend to ignore that there are Japanese, German, French or British sciences and they are not the same because they are modeled by different national traditions and sound patterns and images, in spite of the universality of science! The speciation of thinking, which is crucial for scientific innovation is, nowadays, tremendously reduced because of the globalization of scientific thought or rather, its Americanization through the English language, which prevents this thought to go off towards new paths of auto-organized and more complex levels, as Prigogine would say, which would move it farther and farther away from common equilibrium. Without intellectual speciation, it is unlikely to have really new and original ideas. As current military research operates in relatively isolated environments, we can see the results of intellectual speciation in this field. For instance, the shapes and functionality of military aircraft significantly differ from country to country. In their isolation, the Russians working in the military sector have come up with the Ekranoplane, a surprising aircraft with trimmed wings which can fly just a few meters above water (because of a surface effect) and which combines the storage size of a ship with the speed of a plane[3] and, at the same time, reduces fuel consumption by two thirds! At the same time, the British were inventing the “dragonfly plane” like the Harrier while the French were inventing the “Coléoptère[4]” and the astonishing “Trident[5]”, a plane equipped with a ramjet engine which seems to be an indispensable component of all future aircraft designs! Today, Japan which, in principle, is an opened country that has embraced globalization but which is, in fact, fiercely particularistic, manufactures products which can hardly be compared to what is being made elsewhere. Even in the globalization era, we just have to take a close look at any digital or movie camera to recognize the special Japanese touch. The multiple functions, the abundance of details, the fine assembly work, the quality of the materials used and the reliability of the mechanisms can easily be associated with other traditional Japanese creations, such as silk kimonos, classical painting, or the art of Japanese cooking which is combined with the visual aesthetics of dishes’ final appearance. In production control, the Japanese have invented the Kanban or “just-in-time” method, which is aimed at reducing inventory levels down to zero and which can be applied with total success only in Japan. These examples speak for themselves and demonstrate what can be achieved through intellectual speciation, which takes its roots in linguistic differences.
On the
other hand, creative mental associations depend on sound patterns that are
specific to every tongue. It has been proven that human intelligence is
characterized by man’s ability to mentally associate diverse elements – images,
symbols, sounds and thoughts – and that creativity results from new and
uncommon associations and unusual connections. For instance, in research, if we
think about “pine needles”, this image will beam spontaneously, through the
sound patterns “pine”, “needles” and “pine needles” towards a trail of patterns
that are specific to the English language. The same image will lead to
different associations in other languages. Let us consider another example such
as the word “mint” which might lead to “hint”, “lint” or “ling”. If we take the
Japanese word “hakka”, my thoughts in Japanese might
slide into similar patterns with various meanings like “kaka”, “papa”, “aaah” and, in the process, result in creative associations.
If we apply this to science and philosophy, we realize that we do not think the
same way in different languages. Specific creative associations will exist in
some languages and they will not be the same in other languages. The American
linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf has perfectly clarified this mental process and
backed up his theory with numerous examples.
The loss of creativity
that one can observe in the hard sciences as the use of English spreads in
scientific circles in non-Anglophone societies is not the only problem that
linguistic hegemony creates in its wake. Whether we like it or not, the use of
a unique language on the international scene implies the transfer of the
control of all international organizations that are using it to the countries
where it is used as a national language, whatever the nationality of their
secretaries general and the composition of their steering committees might be.
We can very well see it today with the so-called “international organizations”
such as the UN, the NATO or the IMF, whose roles lie in international politics
or in general-interest economics, in principle. It is less obvious to realize
that it is exactly the same in science and in the domain of industrial
proprietary information. This situation makes it possible for the Anglophone
countries to easily tap into the scientific knowledge produced by
non-Anglophone countries at no cost and to rewrite the history of scientific
developments to a certain extent. Even though they may not originate from
English-speaking countries, scientific papers are nevertheless generally
subjected to the approval of scientists working in Anglophone countries. The
widespread use of a so-called “international scientific language” frequently
places a limit to the search of information to the contents that are available
in this language only. Little by little, the contributions of researchers who
work in other languages are ignored. For instance, we have recently
re-discovered that most stomach ulcers are caused by a bacteria, the
Helicobacter pylori, even though this had been reported more than 25 years ago
by a Cuban doctor who had published his findings in Cuban and Russian
scientific journals, in Spanish and in Russian! We forget that, a long time
before Fleming came along, Ernest Duchesne, a student at the Lyon military
school of medicine, in France, defended a thesis entitled: “Contribution to the
Study of Vital Competition between Microbes. Antagonism between Fungi and
Bacteria”, on December 17, 1897, in which we can find the description of
experiments that prove the action of the penicillium glaucum
on bacteria. Over the past 40 years, English has moved slowly to replace all
other scientific languages used before the Second World War, diverting
international attention away from some real scientific breakthroughs. Because
English has now become the only foreign language in which most scientists can
easily read, the most prestigious scientific journals have become either
American or English. However, to be printed in an American scientific journal,
for instance, papers have to be approved by reviewers who will naturally tend
to favor the authors who work on related or similar research themes, with few
exceptions, and who will tend to discard the rest. Because of that, the
articles that will be retained are often in the line of investigations started
in the United States. They thereby represent technical contributions only,
which further reduces their visibility. Paradoxically, instead of increasing
the visibility of researchers working in non-English speaking countries,
resorting to English for publishing scientific findings blocks out originality
and stifles creativity since it often keeps researchers within research themes
primarily developed elsewhere, in English-speaking countries. At times, there
can even be outright theft of interesting research results as we have witnessed
the case with the saga of the AIDS virus discovery, in 1983.
The reverse problem
exists as well for the scientists who work in English and who lose the benefits
of discoveries made in non-English speaking countries. By ignoring most of the
time the research contributions of research teams who neither work nor publish
in English, English speaking researchers deprive themselves from the knowledge
that is not available in English and which could possibly inseminate them with
new ideas and research directions that are developed outside of the research
communities accredited by the so-called “developed” nations and the
English-speaking countries.
We also have other
inconveniences and problems associated with the hegemony of a single scientific
language in the domain of industrial proprietary information. For instance,
the European Patent Office (EPO), which is located in Munich, Germany, actually
works in three official languages: German, English and French but EPO officials
have indicated a strong preference to reduce the number of official languages
to English only and requested from member countries to rescind the obligation
to translate European patents in the national languages of the countries where
patenting rights are to be enforced. That would mean that, in case of
litigation in most countries of the European Union, a text written in a foreign
language would be considered legal! We can easily imagine the implications that
this would have in a court of justice, when the problem is for an attorney,
whose mother tongue is not English, to defend a case with such a handicap,
particularly when the opposing party would be an American lawyer perfectly at
ease in his language and representing English or American industrial concerns.
Moreover, we must not forget that patents are one of the most important sources
of technical information and that, for the counterfeiter, it is often possible
to bypass the claims specified in a patent provided certain precautions are
taken. A system of patents that would work in English only would lower the cost
of access to the patent’s technical data down to nothing for native English
speakers, including access to the know-how embodied by the patents filed by non
English-speaking countries. This would not only exonerate English speakers from
the obligation of learning foreign languages but it would provide unjustified
free access to a technical know-how developed at great cost by non Anglophone
nations. This would give a tremendous privilege to English speaking nations and
limitless exploitation of all inventions regardless of their origins. We notice
that this is to a large extent already the case with scientific papers written
in English, even though the work that they represent is often financed by
taxpayers in non-Anglophone countries.
The emergence of
the monopolies on knowledge
It is of great interest
to study the evolution of practices in disciplines where nomenclature issues
are essential. As a matter of fact, in botany, for instance, we notice that
there is a will to use English designations more and more for official purposes
as well as international plant classifications. In other words, this is an
attempt of Anglophone countries to not only foist English down the throat of
every other nation but also to give English a transcendental character, which
does not exclude commercial advantages and other ulterior motives. Latin was
used in botany and it had been chosen for purely technical reasons. As a matter
of fact, as this language is native to no one living on earth today, its
compulsory usage in nomenclature reduced the number of inopportune and
undesirable publications that would otherwise use names and designations in
languages other than Latin. In 1988, during a world botanical congress in
Berlin (W. Germany), the use of French for plant names was invalidated even
though French had been, up until then, one of the official languages of the
botanical code and the language used by the scientists from whom the code
originated. The trend now seems toward the invalidation of Latin that would be
replaced by English in the medium range future. Therefore, from now on, if we
want to be precise in regards to the French flora, we would have to use “Arolla Pine” instead of “Pinus cembra”, “Fly Agaric” instead of
“Amanita muscaria”. To avoid inopportune and
undesirable English language publications, the notion of publication
registration had to be invented[6], but such a system would be controlled by
English-speaking countries, right from the start. Why would an activity that
uses the English language only not be controlled by English speakers, who
master it best? In the system that is now under study, English speaking
countries would hand out authorizations related to requests made everywhere to
register new botanical species through institutes accredited by Anglophone
countries according to their own criteria, withholding for themselves the right
to confirm the registration or … to invalidate the corresponding application.
This would give Anglophone countries a complete monopoly of nomenclatures
regarding plant names and designations. This would likely extend to the fauna
as well because other proposals have been made by Anglophone countries to
replace all the nomenclature codes by a unique code that would be called Biocode, a code from which the adjective “international”
has been deliberately removed. We can guess the consequences that such a system
could have on the patents related to drugs that would be extracted from plants
whose “official” names would not have been registered yet. Such patents could
easily be invalidated[7]... We must nevertheless recognize that
English-speaking countries maneuver very skillfully to shore up their status by
using stealthy techniques which focus attention on proposals that sound
innocent and practical, whereas the objective is the appropriation upstream and
downstream of all the mechanisms which would permit English speaking countries
to collect the equivalent of a tax on any value added by somebody else’s work,
in any field, anywhere in the world...
Absurd choices
made by international scientific commissions working in English
English is the native
tongue to a bare 6% of the world population and, even though it is widely
studied, over 80% of the world population has no knowledge of it. If 20% or so
of the world population claim to have some knowledge of English as a
second language, those of us who travel a lot can testify that fluency in
English in non-English speaking countries is just wishful thinking. If English
may be understood well enough for us to check into a hotel, order a meal or
tell a cabby where to take us, it does not often allow us to go much beyond
addressing our most basic needs. True, English has been widely adopted as the
international language for science but can those of us who attend international
conferences honestly tell us that foreigners can make themselves understood in
English as well as native English speakers can? Haven’t we noticed that - apart
from a few exceptions - even highly educated professionals whose mother tongue
is not English have a much harder time to address questions from native English
speakers, and more especially when their work is being questioned and
criticized? Are we blind to the post-conference syndrome that affects most of
the participants who speak English as a second language when they congregate
and regroup as soon as the plenary session is over to communicate freely in
their own native tongues?
A glimpse at past
practices for conducting international conferences would give us a hint as to
how to tackle this type of problem. From 1880 up to the Second World War,
multilingualism - not monolingualism - was the rule
for international scientific colloquia. Every participant would present his
work in his own native tongue. Scientific gatherings would not have been called
“international” in those days without this condition. Any scientist who
attended such meetings had a sufficient knowledge of one, two or sometimes even
three so-called “scientific languages” to be able to follow a technical or
scientific presentation. Most of the time, a basic knowledge of German, French
and English was sufficient in those days. The turn of the XXth
century brought very profound breakthroughs in science and mathematics.
Discoveries and technical applications of such discoveries flourished. The free
flow of scientific and technical information went unhampered by multilingualism.
On the contrary, it seemed to have boosted creativity.
To impose a scholar the
use of a foreign language can result in a sense of complete alienation. The
obligation to express oneself in a language different from the mother tongue
may interfere to a great extent with the thinking process and make it next to
impossible to develop a series of closely argued points. It forces the speaker
to simplify his reasoning even though the topic to be discussed may be very
complex. Because of this, the international scientific commissions that work in
English often retain projects that are far from being the best ones just
because the people who carry the most promising projects could not orally
defend them well enough before panels chaired by native English speaking scientists.
Often, the projects that get funded are those that could not be opposed because
the only experts who could oppose them were simply unable to ask the pertinent
questions or express a well-informed judgment for their lack of fluency in
English.
Monopoly on scientific publishing
Scientific
publishing is a strategic sector as long as it is the main factor that
determines research orientations and the funding that accompanies them.
Publishing is often a high priority objective for the research scientist. Those
who decide what should be published and what should not be published have the
power to steer research objectives, to set the format and framework of the
research topics and to define ways of investigation. Today, the world of
scientific publishing rests against a highly diversified group of scientific
editors, learned societies, university presses and private companies that are
sometimes very powerful. In this type of environment, the quest for maximum
profit has the priority over the desire to facilitate communication between
scientists, which might have been the main motive in former times. What can be
observed nowadays? Three countries, the United States, the United Kingdom and
Holland already control 71,1 % of the scientific
journals (against 65,9 % ten years before). This proportion is commensurate
neither with the efforts and investments made by these countries in fundamental
and applied research nor with their scientific production, qualitatively or
quantitatively. Conversely, scientific giants such as Japan, Russia, Germany or
France have no more that 14,9 % of the scientific
journals. When we compare the scientific weight of a country (evaluated
somewhat arbitrarily by the number of the papers it produces) to the number of
scientific reviews and journals it controls, we notice tremendous differences:
8,5 % against 2,5 % for Japan; 5,2 % against 2,6
% for France[8]. In France, the
“Observatory for science and Technology” (OST) wonders about whether or not the
French scientific community exerts sufficient control on the journals in which
its research results are published. This question can be addressed to
the whole of continental Europe. However, it would be ridiculous for Europeans
to complain about such a situation, because they have created it. It is obvious
that this imbalance is nevertheless one of the remote consequences of the
choice they have made for a so-called “international language” for scientific
communication, which naturally concentrates scientific publishing in
English-speaking countries and those which are within their direct influence.
Monopoly on the international education market
By acknowledging ONE
international language for science and technology, we have implicitly stripped
all other languages of such a role, thus redirecting the youths seeking to
complete their education in a foreign country towards English-speaking
countries, almost exclusively. At the same time, the prestige of all
institutions of higher education in non English-speaking countries has been
graded down as their colleges and universities were deserted by foreign
students. To keep attracting foreign students, some universities in
Scandinavian countries and in other northern European countries have started
offering English-language curricula, at least partially. These universities have
not yet realized that international students always associate the quality of
the communication medium to the quality of the education delivered, and that
courses taught in English by non-native English speakers cannot be better than
a by-product of the courses taught in their national language, a fact that the
foreigners are fully conscious of. Instead of attracting the best students,
those universities have collected the mediocre ones who are more interested in
“college tourism” than in hard-nosed studies, at the expense of EU programs
such as “Comenius”, “Erasmus”, “Grundtvig”,
“Lingua” and “Minerva” which have been designed to promote European exchanges
and make the youths become more “European conscious”.
Communicate with
everybody?
In the
hard sciences and in technology, when Powerpoint
slides and transparencies can compensate for the lack of fluency to present an
experimental setup, a pilot plant or a bunch of equations to model physical
phenomena, English does not seem to be too much of an impediment but can we
really expect a top level scholar in psychology, in social science, in history
or in literature be able to present his research in a fully effective way and
in a manner as convincing and persuasive as if he was conducting his talk in
his own native tongue ? Of course not. The widely
known social scientist Jacques Derrida used to give his talks in English when
he traveled to the US until his American audiences told him to switch back to
French! Even though they did not fully master the French language, Derrida was
far more understandable to them in his own native tongue and even more so as
they were already familiar with his work. The more sophisticated the message
is, the more its wording is important. Resorting to a foreign tongue that is never
fully mastered can only distort, simplify and degrade the quality of the
message. It would be extremely naive to expect international communication not
to be limited by language barriers even though people might resort to foreign
tongues on their own volition. People who are not conscious of this problem are
usually unaware of the various views that foreign language usage might bring
about. Such an attitude is typical of people who master only one language -
their own native tongue - even though they might have a limited knowledge of
another. They do not realize that language is not neutral and that translation
implies switching over to a “different system of coordinates”, as we would say
in Mathematics. The views, opinions and knowledge developed in one language may
be difficult to communicate in another language as the points of reference and
knowledge representations in the other language are different. How can we
expect a great poet, a great philosopher, a great sociologist or psychologist
to be fully able to communicate the true essence of his thoughts by using a
tool that simply does not support such thoughts? Attempting to express this
knowledge in a language other than the one that served the thinking process
that put it together would deliver a half-baked incomplete or mutilated
package. If I can talk in English about hamburgers, management planning and
stock market gains, describing the contents of the Koran in English would
deliver a by-product of the real thing that cannot be cut off from its Arabic
language source. Attempting to reduce expression to a single language is
equivalent to destroying all expressions that are not native to this tongue.
Instead of a healthy body of knowledge, it would deliver a corpse in the
basement and, at best, a digest of little value. In addition, language carries
values and culture. By adopting English as a means for “real international
communication”, I will necessarily have to adapt to the English speaking psyche
and use references that are common to English speaking countries and
Anglo-American culture, thereby losing in the process the best of my message.
So, under such conditions, what would be the point of attempting to communicate
at all?
Human languages are
multi-functional and multi-dimensional tools to apprehend reality. As we hope
to make pharmaceutical breakthroughs by systematically studying the properties
of tropical plants, we probably could as well review the characteristics of the
world’s languages to determine what kinds of mindsets they entail and what
types of knowledge exploration their usage favor. Scientific creativity feeds
on language and language structures as the famous American linguist Benjamin
Lee Whorf has clearly demonstrated. A scientist who gives up the tongue he is
most familiar with to do his work will never be able to fully use his creative
potential and, often, his contributions will remain exclusively of a technical
nature. Imposing the exclusive use of a one and unique foreign language on a
high level professional makes him aphasic. This explains why some of the best
scientists and potential researchers shy away from the so-called international
scientific colloquia nowadays. That is a loss to everyone. That is also why the
imposition of one language in this kind of event has too often led to so much
mediocrity and compulsive mimicry. How could originality emerge when everyone
uses the same words and acronyms, the same points of reference and cultural
markers, and when everyone has read the same papers?
If men
were only after quality and originality, they would realize that the most
innovative thoughts, to be formulated, require tools that do not encumber
expression. To achieve this, people must have full control of their definitions
and representation tools. As Boutros Boutros
Ghali once put it: “Switching from multilingualism to
monolingualism does not show a transition from say 4,
for instance, to 1. This change is of another nature. This could be compared to moving from a multi-party
political system to a one-party government that is usually nothing less than a
dictatorship”. Multilingualism may cause some
translation problems and increase costs but what costs nothing is usually worth
nothing. Questions related to creativity are of primary importance. To ignore
them would lead mankind backwards in its evolutionary path.
We can reasonably hope that the world will finally acknowledge that language diversity is the seed of intellectual speciation, which is in itself the seed of true creativity. Diversity and the way our differences combine are the true world’s wealth, which, in turn, creates meaning and beauty, in all areas of human endeavor including, of course, science and technology.
References[9]
1)
“La
nouvelle guerre contre l’intelligence” (“The new war against intelligence”)
by Charles-Xavier Durand. Vol I : “Les mythologies artificielles” (“Artificial
mythologies”), Editions François-Xavier de Guibert, 319 pages (ISBN :
2868397344 ), December 2001.
2)
“La mise
en place des monopoles du savoir ” (“The emergence of the monopolies on
knowledge”) by Charles Durand, Editions l’Harmattan, 122 pages (ISBN :
2747517713), March 2002.
3)
“La
nouvelle guerre contre l’intelligence” (“The new war against intelligence”)
by Charles-Xavier Durand. Vol II : “La manipulation mentale par la
destruction des langues” (“Mental manipulation through the destruction of
languages”), Editions François-Xavier de Guibert, 329 pages (ISBN :
2868397719), June 2002.
4)
“La
nouvelle guerre contre l’intelligence” (“The new
war against intelligence”) by Charles-Xavier Durand. Vol III : “Un
nouveau programme pour la conscience ” (“A new program for the conscience
”), Editions François-Xavier de Guibert, to be published in the fall 2002.
[1] The presence of the verb “to be” is not indispensable in most sentences. “I am tall” in classical Chinese would be the equivalent of “I tall” in which “tall” applies necessarily to “I”. However, we are talking here about the writings on the essence of the verb “to be”, whose presence is explicit in most western languages.
[2] to be held on November 25-26, 2002, Amphithéâtre Henri Poincaré, Carré des Sciences, Ministère de la Jeunesse, de l’Education nationale et de la Recherche, 25, rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève, 75005 Paris. See: http://www.ciep.fr/actu/formulaire.html.
[3] See the description of the “Orlyonok” at http://www.cueballweb.com/~worktop/reviews/A90_orlynok.html
[4] see http://users.chariot.net.au/~theburfs/URsnecma.html
[5] see http://jpcolliat.free.fr/trident/trident.php3 ?page=5
[6] Details have been provided by Jacques Melot, researcher in mycology and head editor of the journal “Mycologia-Europæa”.
[7] In this respect, one can read the excellent report (in French) which can be found at the following URL : http ://www.micronet.fr/~languefr/ddc/rapportlfddc.htm. This report triggered a flurry of articles in national and regional French newspapers when it was released.
[8] All the data cited was obtained from the number 19 issue of the OST letter (OST : “Sciences and Techniques Observatory”, in French), Spring 2000, which also contains interesting information on e-publishing.
[9] These books are available from French on-line libraries such as www.amazon.fr, www.alapage.com and www.chapitre.com.