Surely yes

Best Regards Alejandro Bortolus

Dear Alejandro, your question is better than any of its potential answers! :-)

This is a reason that non-native speakers often invite native speakers to be 2nd or 3rd authors, or hire native speaker editors.  

Research Gate should take advantage of having among its users famed researchers on linguistics who could devise a high-quality multilingual translator for this multilingual research community. Having English as standard automatically dooms English non-natives to lower scores for many reasons: the most evident is the language of our papers, books, conference papers and articles which are probably published in our native tongue (mine is Spanish). The other is the less than good quality and ease of conversation when making or answering questions in a  conversation among a multilingual group. Providing a multi translation service would bring an extraordinary enhancement to this "Parliament of Scholars", to paraphrase Geoffrey Chaucer's famous phrase "parliament of owls". We, the owls, would be most appreciative and happier.

Great answers so far! Many thanks for sharing. Please, note I have supplied an article as the basic framework to think on these questions, so we can advance from the there (note that two of the last three answers are already discussed in this paper).

Also, please consider these 2 additional points before answering the original question: 1) Are you aware that many young brilliant scientists do not, and will not, speak/write English ever? 2) Are you ok about ignoring the ideas these brilliant scientists may have to supply to your field of study?

Non-NES scholars should require their institutions that, if they require publishing in NES journals as a standard to evaluate their faculty performance, that faculty should have access to institutionally subsidized translation and editing services for the good of their scientific communities, while also encouraging local quality journals that could also attract international submissions. My University has a Translation MA, and its faculty members routinely translate into English, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese articles and other documents written by faculty members for publishing purposes ... a service that is defrayed by the institution. 

I do not think that the ideas deteriorate, per se, if they are not in English. The ideas may have a limited audience, and thus their impact may be small. I can say from experience that very interesting and useful ideas were "slowed down" significantly because they were not originally published in English.

A common language is important. Right now, it happens to be English. Personally, I am glad we don't use Latin anymore!

Thanks Steven. Great opinions. In order to better coordinate this discussion, please remember (everybody) to read the article I posted as a framework (Running like Alice…) because it is possible that, there, you will find most of your first and second thoughts, with literature included.  Considering that answering to my Qs is anything but mandatory, if you decide to join us, I ask you to read the article before you participate with an answer and/or opinion, please.

Steven, I totally understand what you say. However, (I will start for your second point) let´s not to forget that the problem we are considering here is originated by problems in our communication. Some of them have deep cultural roots, really hard to study, disentangle and solve. On the other hand, as most people agree – I explained that in my article-, we do need a common working language to communicate with colleagues around the Globe.  While “educated” people have long used Greek, Latin, German, and French in the past, we currently use English. Everybody understands that and, as far as I know, most of us will try to avoid Latin as much as you :-).

About your first point: ideas do not deteriorate per se if they are not in English. You are right. But, most people (at least in Biological Sciences) think they must publish in English because that is the way "good" science works these days. If you don´t publish your ideas/work in international journals written in English…. You are invisible. Or even worse... you are not a good scientist. That´s the greatest of the prejudices propelling this problem in countries with a different language than English. People have/must publish in English because (mostly) their professional scores (and reputation) depend on that, even if there is little to no financial support for translation services.

People who see how their friend-Native English Speaking (NES) colleagues stop answering their calls because they have helped too many times, which is completely understandable, by the way, but discouraging at the same time. [There is a parallel ethical problem here, where many NES-people accept helping only IF they secure a co-authorship. But somebody will have to start another forum for that!] We are talking about young brilliant researchers (lets say from emerging countries, for instance) who don´t have a clue about English and will not have it, for a variety of reasons until it is too late to learn it properly (high performance science competes against English-lessons for a constantly decreasing amount of time: your lifetime). These people will struggle to say what they have to say, but their English will play against their intentions by deteriorating their original ideas (= as they were conceived in their mother tongue). NES people have to incorporate the idea that No-NES people “do not write exactly what they want to say (meaning what they would have written in their first language); instead, they write the best they can write in English about what they want to say.” ....and a big chunk of "quality" gets lost in this process.

Of course, their ideas are the same in their minds, but the true is that for the rest of the international scientific community, their ideas (and within this particular context, “your ideas” is the same as “you” as a professional of science) will only be THAT limited, primitive, poorly written “thing” they published. This will often affect their chances to get fellowships, grants/funding, jobs, etc. This is something I have discussed with many senior researchers worldwide, and the ultimate question still remains unanswered: are you OK with all that happening? Is the “better them than us”-philosophy a good philosophy for today? In my paper I proposed a couple of options to face this kind of problems in countries like Argentina, and I started this forum to see if I can find some other options, perhaps....more universal?

I wish we could caught the attention of a linguist or an expert working on cultural international communication problems.

Dear Alejandro:

Good day!.

I have read your manuscript and I totally agree.  My personal believe is  to write  scientific papers is like other creative works (films, literature, etc) that always lost in translation, and should be read or watch in the original language.

Have a nice day.

Un fuerte abrazo¡.

Sebastián

Language Will be allways a problem. There are many cases which talk about it. I would just recomended the reading of Ernst Cassirer's An Essay on man  (introduction). There he del with some of these issues. 

Alejandro,

Allow me to pose a quick critique of the approach you are using, offered with the best of intentions. I understand that you are trying to promote good discussion by having people read your article first. Having a common starting point is helpful in many cases. Two limitations come to my mind, however. First, asking people to take the time to read an article before answering a question may scare people away from the discussion because time is valuable. Is the benefit worth the price of admission? Second, one using this approach could be accused of using a tactic to increase his scholarly statistics, as the number of readers of an article would increase. I am not accusing you of trying to manipulate your readership statistics, but your approach could be used in this questionable way by less ethical scholars.

If there truly is a Nash-type equilibrium, as you suggest in the article, a potential winning strategy is the same as the dating problem. If all of the males compete for the most attractive female, only one male wins. If everyone agrees to not compete for the most attractive female, everyone can win.

What I mean is that, as you point out, impact factors are largely determined by how often other scholars cite publications from that journal. If scholars make a point to cite non-English journals, those journals' impact factors will rise. I have never had an experience where an editor discouraged the citation of any particular literature. "Gray literature" does not exist in my field, to my knowledge. By the way, with some methods of calculating a journal's impact, international participation on the review board is a factor.

A less empathetic person might make the argument that good science will find a way to be published and to have an impact. My experience is that editors will work with authors on language if the science is excellent. A cynic might say that if a manuscript is not published in a top journal, language is hardly the primary problem.  

Even in NES countries, scientific manuscripts published in English rarely have a direct impact out in the field. The scientific language has to be translated to "lay" vernacular. That process is difficult. I know because I led translational research for a large, multi-institutional project. The intermediary communicators, which you mention, are absolutely important, and translational work should be included in all grant applications. (I am a little biased on this point - ha.)

Anyway, very good discussion about a very difficult issue.

Best,

Steve 

Dear Steven

Yours is a valuable personal opinion, and I appreciate it.  Indeed, as you well noted, it was/is my intention to set a common starting point in order to avoid looping around topics that already were *long* discussed. I thought of that because ResearchGate questions/forums are open to people within an enormous spectrum of expertise, and I felt like I had to supply a general framework for them (to save time?). Also because RG encourages us (all of us) to frame questions, problems, opinions and critics, with the papers we uploaded to the system in order to fuel the exchange of ideas among scientists. This is the first time I ask a Q on RG, and I am learning from all and every opinion,... a lot.

That article was published in Springer’s AMBIO as an Editor’s Choice article and released with open access. It was also promoted in the facebook fanpage of my research team. I frankly don’t think this forum will change the fate of this particular article more than Springer did. People won't read our work just because we tell them  to do so, unless the decide it is a good decision to read it after a brief scan. Moreover, they have the power to point me to other papers better than mine. I was actually excited about somebody saying “I could not finish your paper because I knew about these other papers, way better than yours, to understand your problem/question”. I could not think of a better way to set a starting point. Perhaps I will learn a better way to do it soon. Perhaps we can put together a small list of articles? I am open to suggestions. That is why I posted a Q here: to learn something better than what I already know about a specific problem.

Please note that I also mentioned/highlighted the supporting literature in that article and that I will now make good use of your answer to encourage colleagues to suggest new alternative and better readings, papers, books etc., that may bring a more interesting and effective perspective than mine.

Abrazos,

Alejandro

For those who are interested and following this question/problem, I´d like to share with you two more articles, by PhD Miguel Clavero, as framework.

Please feel free to suggest more articles from your production or by your colleagues.

Also, please, feel free to answer in a different language than English if you need to, and we´ll see how to deal with that when the time comes.

Article "Awkward wording. Rephrase": Linguistic injustice in ecologi...

Article Language bias in ecological journals

Alejandro,

Just to be as clear as possible, I did not intend to suggest that you are trying to manipulate rating systems. I simply meant that requiring people to read an article before responding to a question could be abused by others. If my comment was perceived as a direct attack, I certainly apologize.  

I am reminded of a story my father tells about an experience serving on a doctoral committee where the student was a NES. At that student's defense of his dissertation, he was having difficulty answering questions, some answers were poorly articulated, and he was clearly struggling. It looked as though he was going to fail. Then, if my memory serves me correctly, it was my father who asked the student to answer the questions in Spanish. When he switched to Spanish, his answers flowed naturally, and he had lengthy answers. The committee may not have understood all, or even part, of the answers, but they could tell that his problems in answering were not due to a lack of knowledge or ability. The student ended up passing, and my understanding is that he is a respected scholar in South America.

I thought readers might appreciate this story.

Cheers! 

More material for those who are interested in this problem:

Today I foud this in the RG Help Center section: 

"To keep Q&A relevant, we may edit your question for language and other inconsistencies. For minor edits, such as typos or grammar changes, you’ll be notified on-site. For larger edits, you’ll receive an email."

and then, it adds:

"To avoid these types of edits, please make sure your questions are in clear, concise English, and that they are phrased as a question."

I wonder if this means that English is the official/exclusive language and that no other language is allowed on RG. My feeling is that RG encourage people to use English to ensure clarity, but that there is no intention to make of English the only exclusive working language. Nevertheless, since I was inviting people to answer my Q in their mother tongue when it is other than English...I wonder if that´s something people really can do. I will ask this directly to RG.

A colleague of mine just sent me this message, I translate for you as follows:

Hi Alejandro

I believe this article in PLOS ONE, and the following two comments (see links bellow), will supply an interesting (and fun) addition to your discussions about failures to communicate scientific findings in English for Non native English Speaking people.   

Paper:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0146193

Comments from readers:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comment?id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2Ff71531b7-212f-4d9b-bd1c-154268917973

Replay from the authors:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comment?id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2F423788e9-2a6d-4ccd-9aeb-c46b594a07aa

Abrazo,

Víctor

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I thank Victor Cueto very much for his help!

Surely yes

Best Regards Alejandro Bortolus