Research findings in languages other than English

July 19, 2006 6:05 AM

How much research is being conducted that never crosses the language barrier into English and/or how long does it typically take research to disseminate into English-speaking journals?

I'm thinking of the social sciences specifically. Do most of the really important/innovative studies immediately garner attention in English-speaking circles or is there a vast amount of research out there that is just waiting to be translated? I know this is a broad question but I'm honestly curious.

For example, is there a wealth of sociological information about Japanese people that we simply haven't tapped because we don't speak the language? When journal articles refer to "potential differences in collectivist cultures" are those data simply out there waiting to be plucked by a multilingual individual?

I'd like to think that ground-breaking research (obviously, ground-breaking is relative depending on your field) would be discovered quickly regardless of the language of origin but I'm just not sure.

posted by trey to education (9 comments total)

I think the best way to put it is that there is an enormous amount of knowledge out there in languages other than English that is either currently relevant or will be relevant in the future to the English speaking academy (and vice-versa). Well funded research by highly visible individuals is usually the first to be translated. Translation of academic work is research in and of itself, and also an academic enterprise. Whilte I doubt that the next theory of gravity is sitting around out there in a foreign language, it's important to realize that research that could move a discipline forward is done in many languages and countries, and the most prolific/visible/profitable/relevant/etc. gets translated first with others to follow as funding/time/expertise/etc. allows.
posted by mrmojoflying at 6:25 AM on July 19, 2006

From this New York Times article about cutting-edge research into marathon training by Americans:

Wanting credit, the researchers published their work. But not wanting to advertise it to the world’s marathon runners, they published it in a Swiss triathlon journal, Der Laufer, written in German.

So it sounds like work is sometimes published in obscure places to intentionally obscure it.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 6:51 AM on July 19, 2006

I think there likely is a good body of research in many languages not translated into english and vice versa, though perhaps not as much for the latter.

But I also agree with mrmojoflying that there usually isn't some huge body of groundbreaking research that non native speakers of the language it was conducted in are unaware of. First, that sort of stuff tends to get translated right quick, because of the opportunities it posseses the more people learn about it. Second, much research on the same subjects is being done simultaneously all around the world, so results could be available in many languages.

Small details from many different studies might lead someone to connect them and come up with a very significant result indeed, and it's this type of research detective work I think translation of research most often yields.

There have been questions about the competency of translations of foreign language studies. Like any other research, the answer to that is to know the validity of your source, in this case, the translation. PubMed notes a study on this. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8598702&dopt=Citation

This question keeps making me think of the old academic adage of "Publish, publish, publish!"! But it's not about keeping the credit in this case....it's the sharing of the knowledge.
posted by mattfn at 6:56 AM on July 19, 2006

For example, is there a wealth of sociological information about Japanese people that we simply haven't tapped because we don't speak the language?

Anyone seriously studying Japanese sociology will either be bilingual and able to stay on top of current research or be working with someone who is. I'm sure this would extend to people studying "potential differences in collectivist cultures," as well. There are a lot of bilingual researchers, and the research network is pretty well connected.
posted by Espy Gillespie at 7:28 AM on July 19, 2006

The novel Middlemarch discusses this (scroll to page 240).
posted by JanetLand at 7:35 AM on July 19, 2006

Yes. To take one piece of anecdotal evidence - I'm currently researching (for work) a social sciences topic across 11 territories worldwide, and recently got in touch with a Brazilian expert in the field. Anyway. she emailed me yesterday to say "I have been publishing a lot of things in the last two years, but not much in English."
posted by runkelfinker at 8:27 AM on July 19, 2006

It's slightly tangental, and more in medicine & health than social science, but I've been hearing more and more complaints from Indian researchers about Western journals and scientists ignoring the work they're doing on the benefits of yoga and meditation. Many of them are publishing in English, but there's a feeling of "Oh, it's an Indian study, that's not valid" and so it doesn't get picked up because of that.

I have no firsthand knowledge on that, but it's a theme I'm starting to see more and more.
posted by occhiblu at 9:16 AM on July 19, 2006

Remember that the vast majority of academics write for a very-well defined audience: the members of their discipline sufficiently well-established to fund their research and enable their promotions.

When that audience is world-wide, as in most of the natural sciences and a few other disciplines, I'd be suprised to find much interesting work not originally in English or quickly translated. When the discipline is effectively sub-divided by locality (like many social sciences, but also subjects like business administration or education, and to a lesser extent practical applications of medicine), the returns on writing in English, or procuring translation from the original language, aren't going to be strong, and very interesting work may be unaccessible.

The special cases would probably be world-wide disciplines which are foreign languages or their literature, or which are structurally bilingual (I'd imagine lots of interesting work in philosophy is never translated from the French because few philosophers don't read French.)
posted by MattD at 9:53 AM on July 19, 2006

For example, is there a wealth of sociological information about Japanese people that we simply haven't tapped because we don't speak the language?

Anyone seriously studying Japanese sociology will either be bilingual and able to stay on top of current research or be working with someone who is. I'm sure this would extend to people studying "potential differences in collectivist cultures," as well. There are a lot of bilingual researchers, and the research network is pretty well connected.
posted by Espy Gillespie at 7:28 AM PST on July 19

Well, the entire reason I used the example of collectivist cultures is because many, many, many social psychological journal articles conclude that their findings may not be valid in collectivist cultures (though further research would be needed to find that out). It always made me wonder -- perhaps all of these questions HAVE been answered for collectivist cultures and the researchers just don't know it because they don't speak the language.
posted by trey at 12:54 PM on July 19, 2006