【经济学人】英语所站的巨人肩膀丨2017.02.04丨总第820期

“EVERYONE who matters speaks English.” So say many in Britain and America. In fact, a lot of people do not. But in some domains, this crude approximation is true: in globalised enterprises the world’s single scholarly language is increasingly indispensable.（读者试译句） Among those global enterprises is science, in which more and more work is being done in English. This is not always good.

“世界上举足轻重的人都是说英语的。”这样的话多见于英吉利和美利坚。不过，实际上很多人并不是说英语的。（期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~）在这些企业中科学方面的事物正在越来越多的使用英语。这并不一直是好事。

• domain       n.(c) 范围，领域; 领土，疆土; 管辖范围; [计] 域名

• Crude adj. 简陋的; 粗糙的，粗杂的; 粗鲁的; 天然的，未加工的;  n.(c) 原油; 原[生]材料，天然物质

• Indispensable adj. 不可缺少的; 绝对必要的; 责无旁贷的; 不可避开的  n.(c) 不可缺少的人或物;

A scientific lingua franca has advantages. A few moments imagining scientists toiling away in different countries unaware of each other’s successes and failures is enough to show that. For centuries, Latin allowed the Copernicuses, Keplers and Newtons of Europe to stand, in Newton’s words, “on the shoulders of giants” who had preceded them. With the rise of European vernaculars as “serious” languages, an educated person was expected to read several; German was a leading language of science.

科学的通用语言是有好处的。时不时想到科学家们在不同的国度里艰难钻研，然而却(因为语言不通)完全不知道其他人的成功与失败已经足以证明这一点了。这么多世纪以来，拉丁语使得哥白尼，开普勒，欧洲的牛顿能够在前人的基础上(加以更深的研究)，用牛顿的话来说就是“站在巨人的肩上”。随着欧洲自己的语言不断发展成为“正统”的语言，受教育者一般要能够读懂多国的著作；德语成为了科学界的主要语言。

• lingua franca通用语言

• toil vi. 长时间或辛苦地工作; 艰难缓慢地移动; 跋涉  n.(u) 报酬很低的苦活，苦工; 罗网，圈套

Now, non-Anglophone scientists learn English; English-speaking scientists hardly bother with other languages at all. The rise in perceived need for more STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) has made schools squeeze anything that looks dispensable, and in the English-speaking world that includes foreign languages. Legislators in Florida have even proposed letting schoolchildren learn a computer language to satisfy schools’ foreign-language requirements.

现在，母语非英语的科学家在学习英语；母语是英语的科学家基本不会有语言上的问题。人的意识中对于更多的STEM项目(科学，技术，工程，数学)需求的不断增加使得学校尽可能的标榜出各种各样不可缺少的项目，而在英语国度中还包括外语。佛罗里达州的立法委员让学童们学会一种计算机语言来满足对“外语”的需求。

Three scientists have raised an alarm about English-only science in a paper in PLOS Biology, a journal. Tatsuya Amano, Juan González-Varo and William Sutherland looked at fields where local knowledge matters, such as ecology and conservation. They found that 64.4% of papers on Google Scholar mentioning “conservation” or “biodiversity” were in English. The second most common language, Spanish, was far behind, with 12.6%.

对于PLOY生物学杂志上只有英文这件事上三位科学家敲响了警钟。Tatsuya Amano, Juan González-Varo和William Sutherland专注于地方性知识领域，例如社会生态和环境保护。他们发现64.4%的谷歌学术论文提到“环境保护”和“生物多样性”都是用英语。最普遍的第二种语言西班牙语，占12.6%，也远落后于英语。

• papers on Google Scholar 谷歌学术论文

Monolingual ghettos are bad for science. In 2004, work on the transfer of H5N1 flu from birds to pigs languished unread in Chinese while critical time was lost. In the study’s sample, only half of Spanish-language papers and a third of those in Japanese even had abstracts in English. Those that did, unsurprisingly, were more likely to be published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals. But the bird-flu case shows that that hardly includes all the science that matters. Some good scientists still can’t write in English.

用一种语言的贫民区不利于科学。2004年的时候，在中国没有解读出作用于鸟类身上的H5N1流感转移到了猪身上，这样关键时刻就丢失了。在研究样本中，只有一半的西班牙语论文和1/3的日语论文的摘要用英文。那些没有这样做得，毫无意外都是发表在知名的同行评审的期刊上。但是禽流感案显示这几乎不包含所有的科学问题。一些很棒的科学家仍然不会用英语写作。

The solution is not to replace English, but to encourage multilingualism wherever practical, and require it when needed. This can be an advantage for non-native English-speakers. Studies have shown that writing and thinking in a second language can encourage a deliberate mode of thinking. Working in your native language encourages the fluid kind. A bilingual person can have the best of both.

解决办法不是取代英语，而是鼓励可行的语言多元化，当需要时就这样要求它。这对非英语母语的人大有益处。研究表明，用第二语言来写作和思考可以促进养成一种深思的思维方式。用母语工作可以促进语言的流动。一个双语者还可以很好的掌握这两种语言。

Multilingualism is needed in other ways. In disciplines including psychology, biology and medicine, university-based researchers will work with subjects (patients, for example) and data-gatherers (say, remote experts in local flora and fauna) in other languages. The bilingual scientist who can later write all this up in English has a competitive advantage.

在其他方面，语言多元化是当下之需。在心理学，生物学和药学这些学科中，高校主导型的研究员需要有某些心态（比如，耐心）和还要数据采集者（通俗说就是，本地动植物的远程专家）一起工作。之后会用英语写出来发表的双语科学家会有竞争优势。

More and more young scientists will speak English as a matter of course. They should ensure that clear English abstracts and keywords from their papers are available; this may be more important than the original abstract itself. But Anglophone scholars and institutions can also play a role. Where work is of particular importance to a particular country or region, they too should make sure that abstracts and keywords are available in relevant languages. Groups of scholars can share the cost of full high-quality translations.

越来越多年轻的科学家会自然而然地讲英语。他们应该保证来自他们论文里清晰的英语摘要和关键词是可用的，这可能比原本的摘要本身更重要。但以英语为母语的学者和机构同样可以发挥作用。在一个工作对特殊的国家或地区尤其重要的地方，他们也应该保证摘要和关键词在相应的语言中是可用的。学者群可以分担高质量翻译的成本。

• as a matter of course 理所当然地，自然地

• Anglophone 以英语为母语的人

• play a role 发挥作用，扮演一个角色

Changing practices takes time. Until then, some technological tools can help. Machine translation (MT) has improved in recent years. And specialised MT systems—say, those designed specifically to handle texts in a field like ecology—are far more accurate than general systems that are designed for all kinds of text (like those that are free online). Building such systems is getting cheaper and easier. If scientists could support the development of such MT systems for their fields, they could increasingly get usable gists of abstracts instantly, and find out which work might be worth full translation.

我们从容地改变着。直到那时，一些技术工具就能起作用。近年来，机器翻译已经取得进步。专门的机器翻译系统——例如，那些特别设计来处理一些特殊领域如生态学——远比通用的被用来处理各种文本的系统精确（比如哪些在线的免费翻译软件）。建立这样的系统成本更低了，而且也更便捷。如果科学家可以支持此类翻译系统在他们研究领域的发展，他们可以更多地即时地使用摘要的主旨，而后找出那些工作可能值得全部翻译。

• takes time 从容进行

• gist 主旨，要点，依据

The alternative is a future in which all work is done in English. In such a world, other languages would fail to develop the kinds of technical vocabulary and expressions needed for science. They would be used socially and at home, but not for serious work. That would be a shame.

这个选择是一个未来的趋势，在此，所有的工作都用英语完成。在这样的世界里，其他的语言可能不能发展科技所需的这些科技词汇和表达。它们只在社交和家庭里使用，而非用于正式工作。也非常可惜。

• Alternative 供替代的选择

翻译 ▍E-R-2

审核 ▍小情人

编辑 ▍璃儿