L | A (Translated with ChatGPT)
By Héctor G. Barnés
"Why do we learn languages?"
Despite triumphant rhetoric about Spanish, English remains the lingua franca in science, business, and technology. A gap that causes us to spend more than we realize.
How much does it cost to speak in Spanish? Or, better said, how much does it cost not to be a native English speaker? Let’s put a figure on it: around 2,000 euros a year. That’s the amount some Spanish researchers estimate they spend annually on translating their articles from their native language to the lingua franca of science in order to get published in top journals.
As one of them explains, "try telling your wife that you have to spend 600 euros to publish an article"—the approximate cost of a (cheap) translation.
In contrast to the triumphant views about Spanish boasting of being the second most spoken language in the world, a closer look reveals that quantity does not equal quality. English has been, continues to be, and will likely become even more so the lingua franca in science and research, as well as in business, politics, the internet, or simply to find a job in a multinational company.
However, English is not the most spoken language in the world as a first language—that honor goes to Mandarin Chinese, with 1.284 billion speakers, highlighting that the key is to be the dominant secondary language. And in that regard, no language beats English.
If, as some claim with a Darwinian argument, we don't need languages like Catalan or Galician because we have Spanish, English speakers could say something similar about Spanish. These contradictions are evident in Spanish research.
"I understand that a technological language is needed for dissemination, which is currently English, just as it was once Latin or French, but that creates discrimination," explains Elisa Borsari, a researcher at the University of Córdoba. "I work on medieval Castilian literature, and they require me to translate it into English so a Russian or Japanese person can read it."
One of the hardest-to-understand paradoxes, as Borsari explains, is that "it's a contradiction because my field is high philology, meaning if you don't know any Spanish, you're not going to understand it even if it's translated into English." This is compounded by the fact that English shapes the terms used and the mental frameworks in which research is conducted.
Many institutional decisions end up forcing the adoption of English. As the Italian philologist explains, "Why does the ministry require you to submit a project in English when you're asking for more than 100,000 euros? It's a barrier because they've already decided in their minds that the humanities won't have access to that much funding."
The cost of translations, she continues, is high though "fair," because "it's difficult to translate an article on medieval poetry or sociology." The shift to English needs to be flawless, ideally done by a native speaker specialized in the subject, otherwise there's a risk of the work being rejected.
Of the 12 major academic journals in Western Europe, eight publish their articles in English, and the remaining four have their guidelines in that language.
A couple of years ago, Indian-born editor Sheha Kulkarni published an article for the London School of Economics where she explained how costly it can be to have a great idea but not speak English.
"Non-native authors living in a non-English-speaking world invest too much time and money," explained one of the researchers interviewed. 25 years ago, the percentage of academic journals in English in the Science Citation Index was already 95%.
Europe Without English Speakers, but With English
Another paradox is that of the European Union (EU), where despite Brexit, English remains an official language, even though it is only officially recognized in Ireland and Malta.
"Fighting against the dominance of English in fields like science is a battle that's lost from the start," says David Fernández Vítores, associate professor at the University of Alcalá and head of the 'Spanish, a Living Language' report for the Cervantes Institute since 2010. "It's not a language war as often portrayed, but an interlinguistic agreement for mutual understanding, albeit tied to economic and political power."
Therefore, hoping that Spanish could become the lingua franca in the EU is a utopia. But it would probably also be a fantasy to elevate French or German to that status.
"There are two very contradictory currents," explains the researcher. "One promotes multilingualism at all costs, as reflected in the first regulation of the European Council, where texts were written in French and then translated into other languages. Since the UK's entry into the Union in 1973, there has been a shift, and it will be impossible to change that trend."
The reasons are primarily practical: the slowdown that would occur from translating a single text into each of the official languages would be inefficient, and even the French, who have always boasted that their language was the language of diplomacy, have not been able to change the trend. As Fernández Vítores recalls, "institutions are energized when there is consensus, and in the end, it’s all about getting the job done."
"If you’re born in Oxford, you’ve got a lot going for you."
That's why it's not as important to focus on the world's first language but rather on the second one. And that isn’t Mandarin Chinese or Spanish, but English, with 753 million non-native speakers and 379 million native speakers. It's the only language in the 'top ten', along with French and Indonesian, where non-natives outnumber natives, a shift that occurred more than a decade ago.
We don't want English speakers, but native speakers.
Ana Cristina Suzina recalls that Saturday night in 2018 when ECREA, the European Communication Research and Education Association, organized a round table on the power structures and discrimination caused by the use of English as a lingua franca in science.
Only 12 people, including the speakers, attended, but it allowed the Brazilian to open a can of worms and publish, two years later, a paper on English as a lingua franca and the "sterilization of scientific work."
“It’s normal to establish a common knowledge platform, but who decides it? And what’s the criteria?” she asks over the phone from London.
“There’s another added problem: academic institutions in Latin America and Spain evaluate researchers based on their access to journals published in English, and your career will progress to the extent that you publish in those journals. However, these same institutions do not provide support for learning English, doing research stays, or paying for translations.”
The most common scenario is that researchers pay for translations out of their own pockets, which leads to a fundamental discrimination “between those who can afford these expenses and those who cannot, even if they are brilliant researchers.”
Another key point Suzina raises is what we mean when we talk about English. While increasingly in many areas a neutral English with some inaccuracies is accepted as long as it allows for understanding, this is not the case in the academic world.
"When we establish English as a lingua franca, it should be a common ground for exchange, where native speakers recognize comprehensible English and non-natives make an effort to reach an intermediate level," she explains.
"But that doesn't happen: we establish English as a lingua franca, but with a very high standard." The situation in Latin America is even more extreme than Spanish. Suzina recalls that a translation by a native can cost 350 pounds: at the exchange rate, "five times the minimum wage." The consequence is obvious: only those who can afford it can thrive.
The impact of English is not limited to academic circles, although it is one of the most visible. Suzina cites ongoing research by one of her colleagues, who is studying the impact of using English as a lingua franca in multinational companies.
"One of the things she has identified is that Chinese employees in these large companies end up speaking minimally in English, and their superiors believe they do not contribute much, so they do not get promoted. However, what happens is that they are afraid of speaking poorly, so they reduce their participation."
On the internet, Spanish is clearly underrepresented compared to English, which, as Borsari reminds us, is the language of technology and economy. According to an analysis by W3Techs on the most visited websites, 60.5% of the most relevant content is in English, while the percentage of users who speak that language as their native tongue is 25.9%. Spanish accounts for 3.9% of content for 7.9% of speakers.
It's an advantage easily explained through geopolitical history. Just over a century ago, scientific production alternated between English, French, and German. The defeat of Germany after World War II led to the abandonment of the language that had been used for physics up until then.
The exile of Central European scientists to the U.S. and its subsequent economic and research boom, combined with the Allied victory, resulted in English becoming a global lingua franca, while French fell out of favor.
Who will want to learn languages?
It might seem like we’re witnessing a process of homogenization where English will eventually prevail as the sole language, although some suggest the rise of a neo-Esperanto based on English.
We’re used to hearing that a language disappears every two weeks, that by 2115 around 90% of the languages we know today will be extinct, and that perhaps someday Mandarin Chinese will overtake English, as suggested by linguistics expert John H. McWhoreter.
What this Darwinian and purpose-driven view of languages overlooks are the technological changes of recent years, which could, for example, upend the necessity of learning languages. Fernández Vítores is surprised that learning languages remains a crucial factor for job differentiation, something that is already well-established in resumes.
"I thought that the professional edge gained from knowing languages would become a thing of the past, but English or Chinese are still highly marketable in companies with international relations," he responds.
However, the value of translators has decreased over the last 20 years. When he started working as a translator, he was paid fifteen cents per word. The reason is simple: in just over five years, translation software has significantly improved, so while linguists used to be hired to translate texts "to understand what they were about," today potential clients only need to use an automatic translator.
The market for commercial contracts has grown, but its value has also decreased. Fernández Vítores has a theory that might be surprising: "The language of the future will be any language, because the language of the future will be translation."
It might sound shocking, but he proposes the following scenario: "Each person will write their texts in their own language, and translation systems will be so refined that, sooner rather than later, 98% of texts will be perfect."
In other words, there will be no need to perfect a language, and simultaneous translation will become more of a matter of courtesy and protocol than a necessity. This will be a gain for the world of research, teaching, and business, but a loss for translators.
In that context, why would we need Spanish, or even English? As Fernández Vítores concludes, the fact that the number of non-native speakers has surpassed that of native speakers has led to English becoming de-nationalized:
"Now it belongs to everyone, and not speaking English perfectly doesn’t mean your negotiation outcome will be worse than that of a native speaker, who might be frustrated because they have to adapt to your syntax. Imagine if Spaniards had to deal with 600 million non-natives constantly trying to speak to us in Spanish."
Who wants to live in a world where everyone speaks Spanish poorly?
By Héctor G. Barnés
"Why do we learn languages?"
Despite triumphant rhetoric about Spanish, English remains the lingua franca in science, business, and technology. A gap that causes us to spend more than we realize.
How much does it cost to speak in Spanish? Or, better said, how much does it cost not to be a native English speaker? Let’s put a figure on it: around 2,000 euros a year. That’s the amount some Spanish researchers estimate they spend annually on translating their articles from their native language to the lingua franca of science in order to get published in top journals.
As one of them explains, "try telling your wife that you have to spend 600 euros to publish an article"—the approximate cost of a (cheap) translation.
In contrast to the triumphant views about Spanish boasting of being the second most spoken language in the world, a closer look reveals that quantity does not equal quality. English has been, continues to be, and will likely become even more so the lingua franca in science and research, as well as in business, politics, the internet, or simply to find a job in a multinational company.
However, English is not the most spoken language in the world as a first language—that honor goes to Mandarin Chinese, with 1.284 billion speakers, highlighting that the key is to be the dominant secondary language. And in that regard, no language beats English.
If, as some claim with a Darwinian argument, we don't need languages like Catalan or Galician because we have Spanish, English speakers could say something similar about Spanish. These contradictions are evident in Spanish research.
"I understand that a technological language is needed for dissemination, which is currently English, just as it was once Latin or French, but that creates discrimination," explains Elisa Borsari, a researcher at the University of Córdoba. "I work on medieval Castilian literature, and they require me to translate it into English so a Russian or Japanese person can read it."
One of the hardest-to-understand paradoxes, as Borsari explains, is that "it's a contradiction because my field is high philology, meaning if you don't know any Spanish, you're not going to understand it even if it's translated into English." This is compounded by the fact that English shapes the terms used and the mental frameworks in which research is conducted.
Many institutional decisions end up forcing the adoption of English. As the Italian philologist explains, "Why does the ministry require you to submit a project in English when you're asking for more than 100,000 euros? It's a barrier because they've already decided in their minds that the humanities won't have access to that much funding."
The cost of translations, she continues, is high though "fair," because "it's difficult to translate an article on medieval poetry or sociology." The shift to English needs to be flawless, ideally done by a native speaker specialized in the subject, otherwise there's a risk of the work being rejected.
Of the 12 major academic journals in Western Europe, eight publish their articles in English, and the remaining four have their guidelines in that language.
A couple of years ago, Indian-born editor Sheha Kulkarni published an article for the London School of Economics where she explained how costly it can be to have a great idea but not speak English.
"Non-native authors living in a non-English-speaking world invest too much time and money," explained one of the researchers interviewed. 25 years ago, the percentage of academic journals in English in the Science Citation Index was already 95%.
Europe Without English Speakers, but With English
Another paradox is that of the European Union (EU), where despite Brexit, English remains an official language, even though it is only officially recognized in Ireland and Malta.
"Fighting against the dominance of English in fields like science is a battle that's lost from the start," says David Fernández Vítores, associate professor at the University of Alcalá and head of the 'Spanish, a Living Language' report for the Cervantes Institute since 2010. "It's not a language war as often portrayed, but an interlinguistic agreement for mutual understanding, albeit tied to economic and political power."
Therefore, hoping that Spanish could become the lingua franca in the EU is a utopia. But it would probably also be a fantasy to elevate French or German to that status.
"There are two very contradictory currents," explains the researcher. "One promotes multilingualism at all costs, as reflected in the first regulation of the European Council, where texts were written in French and then translated into other languages. Since the UK's entry into the Union in 1973, there has been a shift, and it will be impossible to change that trend."
The reasons are primarily practical: the slowdown that would occur from translating a single text into each of the official languages would be inefficient, and even the French, who have always boasted that their language was the language of diplomacy, have not been able to change the trend. As Fernández Vítores recalls, "institutions are energized when there is consensus, and in the end, it’s all about getting the job done."
"If you’re born in Oxford, you’ve got a lot going for you."
That's why it's not as important to focus on the world's first language but rather on the second one. And that isn’t Mandarin Chinese or Spanish, but English, with 753 million non-native speakers and 379 million native speakers. It's the only language in the 'top ten', along with French and Indonesian, where non-natives outnumber natives, a shift that occurred more than a decade ago.
We don't want English speakers, but native speakers.
Ana Cristina Suzina recalls that Saturday night in 2018 when ECREA, the European Communication Research and Education Association, organized a round table on the power structures and discrimination caused by the use of English as a lingua franca in science.
Only 12 people, including the speakers, attended, but it allowed the Brazilian to open a can of worms and publish, two years later, a paper on English as a lingua franca and the "sterilization of scientific work."
“It’s normal to establish a common knowledge platform, but who decides it? And what’s the criteria?” she asks over the phone from London.
“There’s another added problem: academic institutions in Latin America and Spain evaluate researchers based on their access to journals published in English, and your career will progress to the extent that you publish in those journals. However, these same institutions do not provide support for learning English, doing research stays, or paying for translations.”
The most common scenario is that researchers pay for translations out of their own pockets, which leads to a fundamental discrimination “between those who can afford these expenses and those who cannot, even if they are brilliant researchers.”
Another key point Suzina raises is what we mean when we talk about English. While increasingly in many areas a neutral English with some inaccuracies is accepted as long as it allows for understanding, this is not the case in the academic world.
"When we establish English as a lingua franca, it should be a common ground for exchange, where native speakers recognize comprehensible English and non-natives make an effort to reach an intermediate level," she explains.
"But that doesn't happen: we establish English as a lingua franca, but with a very high standard." The situation in Latin America is even more extreme than Spanish. Suzina recalls that a translation by a native can cost 350 pounds: at the exchange rate, "five times the minimum wage." The consequence is obvious: only those who can afford it can thrive.
The impact of English is not limited to academic circles, although it is one of the most visible. Suzina cites ongoing research by one of her colleagues, who is studying the impact of using English as a lingua franca in multinational companies.
"One of the things she has identified is that Chinese employees in these large companies end up speaking minimally in English, and their superiors believe they do not contribute much, so they do not get promoted. However, what happens is that they are afraid of speaking poorly, so they reduce their participation."
On the internet, Spanish is clearly underrepresented compared to English, which, as Borsari reminds us, is the language of technology and economy. According to an analysis by W3Techs on the most visited websites, 60.5% of the most relevant content is in English, while the percentage of users who speak that language as their native tongue is 25.9%. Spanish accounts for 3.9% of content for 7.9% of speakers.
It's an advantage easily explained through geopolitical history. Just over a century ago, scientific production alternated between English, French, and German. The defeat of Germany after World War II led to the abandonment of the language that had been used for physics up until then.
The exile of Central European scientists to the U.S. and its subsequent economic and research boom, combined with the Allied victory, resulted in English becoming a global lingua franca, while French fell out of favor.
Who will want to learn languages?
It might seem like we’re witnessing a process of homogenization where English will eventually prevail as the sole language, although some suggest the rise of a neo-Esperanto based on English.
We’re used to hearing that a language disappears every two weeks, that by 2115 around 90% of the languages we know today will be extinct, and that perhaps someday Mandarin Chinese will overtake English, as suggested by linguistics expert John H. McWhoreter.
What this Darwinian and purpose-driven view of languages overlooks are the technological changes of recent years, which could, for example, upend the necessity of learning languages. Fernández Vítores is surprised that learning languages remains a crucial factor for job differentiation, something that is already well-established in resumes.
"I thought that the professional edge gained from knowing languages would become a thing of the past, but English or Chinese are still highly marketable in companies with international relations," he responds.
However, the value of translators has decreased over the last 20 years. When he started working as a translator, he was paid fifteen cents per word. The reason is simple: in just over five years, translation software has significantly improved, so while linguists used to be hired to translate texts "to understand what they were about," today potential clients only need to use an automatic translator.
The market for commercial contracts has grown, but its value has also decreased. Fernández Vítores has a theory that might be surprising: "The language of the future will be any language, because the language of the future will be translation."
It might sound shocking, but he proposes the following scenario: "Each person will write their texts in their own language, and translation systems will be so refined that, sooner rather than later, 98% of texts will be perfect."
In other words, there will be no need to perfect a language, and simultaneous translation will become more of a matter of courtesy and protocol than a necessity. This will be a gain for the world of research, teaching, and business, but a loss for translators.
In that context, why would we need Spanish, or even English? As Fernández Vítores concludes, the fact that the number of non-native speakers has surpassed that of native speakers has led to English becoming de-nationalized:
"Now it belongs to everyone, and not speaking English perfectly doesn’t mean your negotiation outcome will be worse than that of a native speaker, who might be frustrated because they have to adapt to your syntax. Imagine if Spaniards had to deal with 600 million non-natives constantly trying to speak to us in Spanish."
Who wants to live in a world where everyone speaks Spanish poorly?
