October 11th, 2022 | RESEARCH
Having a central scientific language remains crucial for advancing and globally sharing science. Nevertheless, maintaining one dominant language also creates barriers to accessing scientific careers and knowledge. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we describe how, when, and why to make scientific literature more readily available in multiple languages through the practice of translation. We broadly review the advantages and limitations of neural machine translation systems and propose that translation can serve as both a short- and a long-term solution for making science more resilient, accessible, globally representative, and impactful beyond the academy. We outline actions that individuals and institutions can take to support multilingual science and scientists, including structural changes that encourage and value translating scientific literature. In the long term, improvements to machine translation technologies and collective efforts to change academic norms can transform a monolingual scientific hub into a multilingual scientific network. Translations are available in the supplemental material.
Document
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Team Members
Emma Steigerwald, Author, University of California, BerkeleyValeria Ramírez-Castañeda, Author, University of California, Berkeley
Débora Y C Brandt, Author, University of California, Berkeley
András Báldi, Author, Centre for Ecological Research
Julie Teresa Shapiro, Author, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Lynne Bowker, Author, University of Ottawa
Rebecca D Tarvin, Author, University of California, Berkeley
Citation
Identifier Type: DOI
Identifier: 10.1093/biosci/biac062
Identifier Type: ISSN
Identifier: 1525-3244
Publication: BioScience
Volume: 72
Number: 10
Page(s): 988–998
Related URLs
Tags
Audience: Scientists
Discipline: Computing and information science | General STEM
Resource Type: Peer-reviewed article | Research Products
Environment Type: Higher Education Programs | Informal | Formal Connections | Media and Technology | Professional Development | Conferences | Networks | Resource Centers and Networks | Websites | Mobile Apps | Online Media