[pvaldes]

Imagine a world where every piece of poetry, novel or literature would be forced to be written in English. Our literature would be much poor and many new points of view would be dismissed just because "not enough Anglo Saxon". This does not happen because editors take care of the translation, hire professional translators for that, and let the creator alone to keep creating while happily selling the novel in 40 different languages. That is the right way to do it.

Science still lives in a previous, less sophisticated, age. We should be grateful for them not expecting us to knit our own tunics also.

The idea that somebody somewhere could have a possible solution to our urgent problems but we'll need to wait until this people learns English and "earns the right to be heard", is a disaster.

[indymike]

> Imagine a world where every piece of poetry, novel or literature would be forced to be written in English.

Nobody is wanting that world.

> because "not enough Anglo Saxon"

What is this, the year 1055? "Anglo Saxon" ceased to be a cultural group later that century. Now "Anglo-Saxon" is just a phony geopolitical spectre, mostly invoked by despotic governments as a scapegoat.

> hire professional translators for that, and let the creator alone...that is the right thing to do.

It would be if scientific publications had audiences where it made economic sense to do such a translation. Additionally, the cost of such translation for scientific literature is much more expensive owing to the need for great accuracy.

[pvaldes]

Most scientists work for free for the journals as reviewers, the same Journals earn also money obviously selling the product and they aren't cheap. They didn't spend a cent into the research done. Somebody else paid for it.

How the cost of a translator could be too expensive when everybody is working for free for you?

> What is this, the year 1055?

If your surname is Brown your work will be treated clearly different by journals than if it is Gutierres or Coulibaly. The editors probably don't even perceive that there is a bias here.

Including at least a member with an English name in your team is a known trick that eases to be accepted by publishers.

[cge]

>How the cost of a translator could be too expensive when everybody is working for free for you?

I don't necessarily disagree that translation would be beneficial, but it isn't just a matter of cost. As an author, I would absolutely not be comfortable with a journal translating my research without my direct involvement. Translation would require too much expert knowledge of the specific fields involved. I'd even be uncomfortable myself with translation of specific terms, even for languages I might know in non-scholarly contexts: it would require knowing the literature of the specific field in the language.

So it wouldn't be enough to have the journal hire a translator. It would be more work for the authors, and likely for others in their field who would need to be brought in.

[Someone]

> Imagine a world where every piece of poetry, novel or literature would be forced to be written in English. Our literature would be much poor and many new points of view would be dismissed just because "not enough Anglo Saxon"

In such a world “written in English” wouldn’t imply “Anglo Saxon”, just as today, it doesn’t imply “British” anymore.

I think people would be better off if they all spoke the same language. Reason is that, statistically, the best literature is written in a language with many writers. So, if you grow up monolingual speaking a minority language, the best stuff you can read won’t be as good as the best stuff written in English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, etc. The worst stuff you can read won’t, either, but nobody reads that stuff (some may argue Hollywood is the exception that proves the rule)

Getting there will have pain points, though. Going cold turkey would cut off people from their culture (imagine children not being able to read what their parents wrote). However, a few centuries of bilingual education would, IMO, be a fairly smooth way to get there. People would no longer be able to read what their forefathers wrote, but that already is the case with most languages (few people can read Middle English fluently, for example)

That’s all assuming the “English” people would speak would be universally intelligible, though. That’s far from guaranteed to happen. Subcultures with their own words and grammar changes would still form.

[thaumasiotes]

> I think people would be better off if they all spoke the same language.

This has some problems related to the resulting intellectual monoculture.

[Someone]

I don’t see how that follows. As a counterexample, do you think there’s a monoculture in the English-speaking part of the USA?

[thaumasiotes]

Yes? It isn't subtle.

[thfuran]

>some may argue Hollywood is the exception that proves the rule

Anyone who argues that has no understanding of how proof works.

[DFHippie]

"The exception that proves the rule" is an idiom that depends on a different meaning of the word "prove" from what you have in mind.

[thfuran]

No, that sense of the expression is just nonsense based on a misunderstanding of the actual expression.

[adolph]

Irregardless, if the misunderstanding is widespread enough, it literally becomes the meaning.

[peterfirefly]

I sanction that even thought it's all moot now.

[peterfirefly]

Really? It's #4 on the list:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prove#Verb

[Der_Einzige]

Expressions like this one or "it is what it is" are just boomerisms

[peterfirefly]

> The idea that somebody somewhere could have a possible solution to our urgent problems but we'll need to wait until this people learns English and "earns the right to be heard", is a disaster.

Gauss, Leibniz, Euler, and the Bernoullis (all of them) wrote their theses in Latin.

Methinks you aren't so much against a lingua franca but want it to be Latin(ate) and not English.

[readthenotes1]

Imagine a world where every scientific articles from most regions of the world were written in the language that was only used by scientists and a few religious zealots.

Then you get something historians call The age of enlightenment...