Seeking panelists to share how their multilingual open science has been affected by US Federal policy shifts

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Does your work include aspects of multilingual and open science? Have you been affected by the current policy and funding paradigm in the United States? Please note that you do not need to be based in the US or have directly received funding from a US institution to have been affected by the current policies. The core contributors at Translate Science are seeking folks who can shed light on the challenges and opportunities of our current situation so that we can all better understand how to orient our efforts towards a more just scientific enterprise. If you know of others who may be interested please share this post with them

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Summary of our September Panel: Humberto and Devang

The Core Contributors want Translate Science to be a community of interest around the broad issues concerning multilingualism in science. To achieve this we hope that by amplifying diverse ideas and experiences via the medium of an online panel discussion we can help others understand how they too may have important perspectives to share. Our intention is to maintain a conversation that connects folks across disciplines so they can better advocate for multilingual science from their positions.

On September 3rd we had our second panel with 2 wonderful guests: Humberto Debat (tenured Research Scientists, Institute of Plant Pathology Center for Agricultural Research, Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria) and Devang Mehta (tenure-track Assistant Professor, Department of Biosystems, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven). We invited Devang because one of our core contributors Carolina Quezada worked with him through the ecrLife editorial team where they used the platform to draw attention to issues in research culture. Humberto was invited by searching our mailing list for candidates and we thought their work on PanLingua was very aligned with Translate Science.

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Panel discussion on September 3rd at 16:00 UTC

Being a part of the Translate Science community can mean many different things because the work of increasing multilingualism within the scientific enterprise by necessity engages diverse actors working in science. In our second panel discussion, the Translate Science core contributors are seeking to help our wider community understand different approaches by providing a platform for folks to share how they advance open and multilingual science in their current role. We hope that this event can shed some light on the issues that affect researchers in different regions and serve to bring together others engaging with them.

In this iteration of our Translate Science community meeting we will be featuring two researchers in biology

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Summary of our April panel: Lynne and Emma

By Carolina Quezada on behalf of the Translate Science core contributors

What is the role of scientists and translators in making science more accessible? How are scientists advancing in open and multilingual science? What is the best use we of machine translation tools?

The Translate Science community is seeking to provide a platform to have open discussions about these interesting topics with a panel of diverse actors working in science. On April 8th we had our first panel with 2 spectacular guests:  Lynne Bowker (Full Professor at the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Ottawa and incoming Canada Research Chair in Translation, Technologies, and Society at Université Laval) and Emma Steigerwald (postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California Santa Cruz). We learned about their work after reading a paper they co-authored on the potential of machine translation tools to foster a more multilingual future for science. Our discussion with them was a great opportunity to start showing our wider community the type of work that we intend to support.

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Translate Science April 2024 Panel

You’re invited to a panel discussion on April 22, 2024 at 16:00 UTC

Being a part of the Translate Science community can mean many different things because the work of increasing multilingualism within the scientific enterprise by necessity engages diverse actors working in science. In our first panel discussion, the Translate Science core contributors are seeking to help our wider community understand different approaches by providing a platform for folks to share how they advance open and multilingual science in their current role. We hope that this event can shed some light on the issues that we care about and serve to bring together others engaging with them.

In this iteration of our Translate Science community meeting we will be featuring Lynne Bowker and Emma Steigerwald.

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Caveats of machine translation

Translation tools (often referred to as CAT tools for ‘computer aided translation’) are a great means of streamlining some of the elements of a translation process, such as checking terminology or retrieving existing translations (so-called Translation Memories). Modern versions of these tools allow for a web-based, collaborative translation, giving collaborators such possibilities as revising and/or commenting proposed translations, evaluating existing translations or adding machine translation (henceforth MT) support. Modern MT systems are based on artificial neural networks, which have boosted quality considerably since roughly the mid-2010s.

CAT tools, with or without added machine translation support, have been studied from various angles. While they in general increase efficiency and often ease the task of translation as translators do not have to start from scratch, there are some caveats to be kept in mind when working with them. Here are some of the more important ones.

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Theoretical background to translation

This is the first of two blog posts with general notes on how to approach the task of translating science, touching upon the most prevalent basic notions and advice relevant to the task. The two main points presented in this and the upcoming post are (a) an introduction into a present-day functionalist view of translation which provides for a wide range of purpose-driven strategic translation options and (b) key caveats when making use of digital support tools for translation including machine translation. These general notes are meant for people who read academic texts at a postgraduate level and have experience with scholarly publishing, but may have little to no experience in translation. As technological tools are nowadays omnipresent in translation processes, they have been comprised here under basic background to translation.

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Übersetzte Artikel sind Forschungsleistungen

Artikel ini juga tersedia dalam bahasa Indonesia. (Dieser Artikel ist auch in indonesischer Sprache verfügbar.) This article is also available in English. (Dieser Artikel ist auch in einer englischen Fassung verfügbar.) Cet article est aussi disponible en français. (Dieser Artikel ist auch in einer französischen Fassung verfügbar.)

Die Übersetzung wissenschaftlicher Arbeiten kann einen wichtigen Beitrag für wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaften leisten. Beispielsweise hatte Albert Einstein einige Artikel ins Englische übersetzt, damit angloamerikanische Kolleg*innen zum neuesten Stand der Wissenschaft beitragen konnten. Die moderne Tendenz, wissenschaftliche Arbeiten, die nicht in englischer Sprache verfasst sind, zu ignorieren, führt zu schlechteren Studien und doppelter Arbeit. Die Übersetzung kann dazu beitragen, sprachliche Barrieren zu überwinden, und ist daher ein wichtiges Mittel, um die Zugänglichkeit und die Teilhabe zu verbessern und der Zersplitterung der Literatur in sprachliche Inseln entgegenzuwirken.

Das Übersetzen öffnet die Wissenschaft auch für die Gesellschaft, für die sieben Milliarden Menschen, die kein Englisch sprechen, und für viele weitere, die Englisch nicht als Muttersprache haben. Darunter sind viele Menschen, die direkt zur Wissenschaft beitragen, indem sie Daten sammeln, Menschen, die auf Probleme hinweisen, die erforscht werden müssen, oder Menschen, die die Früchte der Wissenschaft nutzen (Lehrer/Ausbilder, Architekten, Ingenieure, Ärzte, Aktivisten, politische Entscheidungsträger, Journalisten usw.) und dadurch den gesellschaftlichen Nutzen der Wissenschaft gewähren.

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Translated articles are research output

This article is also available in Indonesian. Artikel ini juga tersedia dalam bahasa Indonesia.

This article is also available in French. Cet article est aussi disponible en français.

Translating scholarly works can contribute enormously to a scientific community. Famously, Albert Einstein translated articles into English so that Anglo-Americans could contribute to state-of-the-art science. The modern tendency to ignore scholarship that is not in English leads to lower quality studies and double work. Translation can help overcome linguistic barriers, and is thus an important means to increase accessibility and participation as well as to counteract fragmentation of the literature into linguistic islands.

Translation also opens science to society, to the seven billion people who do not speak English and many more who do not use it as their first language. Among them are many people who contribute directly to science by collecting data, people who point to problems that need research, or people who need to use the fruits of science (teachers/trainers, architects, engineers, doctors, activists, policy makers, journalists, etc.) and amplify the societal benefit of science.

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