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From: mat@mole-end.matawan.nj.us
Subject: Re: L'OBJET: A new journal (in French) on object technology.
Message-ID: <1995Feb6.193141.11071@mole-end.matawan.nj.us>
Organization: :
References: <3gluda$nm1@crchh327.bnr.ca> <3h06di$iqe@news.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 19:31:41 GMT
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In article <3h06di$iqe@news.cs.tu-berlin.de>, mfx@cs.tu-berlin.de (Markus Freericks) writes:
> In article <3gsp26$81u@bambi.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE> beckmann@Informatik.Mathematik.Uni-Mainz.DE (Markus Beckmann) writes:
> > But if you want to announce an workshop on OOSE that will take place
> > in Germany (or France or Italy) or ... and the "conference" language
> > will be German (...) and it is addressed to people from ...
> > why write in English???

> > And the same with a magazine in French: why announce it in English?
> > If the "news-readers" do not understand the announcement they will
> > hardly understand the articles of that mag.

> > Oder liege ich da vollkommen falsch?
 
> Nein, tust Du nicht.
 
> IMHO, the real question is: why would anyone create a new scientific
> journal of presumed world-wide interest that is restricted in its language?
> One can safely assume that both the audience and the authors of such a
> journal can read and write English.
> 
> Since the vast amount of written material out there is written in some kind
> of English, I have invested the time into learning the language. If
> everyone would write in their own language, I coulnd't spare the time to
> learn all those languages out there. A lingua france is necessary, and
> English is a good choice since it is the first, second or third language
> for almost everyone on this planet.

The vast majority of chemical engineers do not speak German, even though
German is the language of chemistry (or was, if I have my history right).

The pure sciences, with their limited communities, have retained the
tradition of a `universal' language, just as the Church retained Latin
through the middle ages and into the modern era.

Before Gutenberg and before widespread education, there was no way to
translate and reproduce books widely enough to pay for the translation
and the making of each copy.  Since university education became widespread,
this has changed in the professions (especially engineering) but not in
the pure sciences.

As we go from `computer science' to something like a real engineering
discipline, it will become economical--and useful--to translate important
articles and to disseminate information in a variety of languages.

It's true that I, as a typical monolingual (unilingual?) American, will be
moderately put out to see things that I cannot make sense of--but that's my
problem, especially considering the advantage I already have in speaking
English from my earliest years.
-- 
 (This man's opinions are his own.)
 From mole-end				Mark Terribile
 mat@mole-end.matawan.nj.us, Somewhere in Matawan, NJ
	(Training and consulting in C, C++, UNIX, etc.)
