 ead
this sentence slowly: "The journal Diagnostic Exposure reports that
gentlemen are inferior to domestic animals in stage setting when feeling children
with assumed ill will."
Read
that sentence again. If you understand it, I congratulate you. It took me a while
to fathom its meaning. Please,
hold your complaints to the editor that this column gets out of hand. It is not
about molesting little boys. It is about the results of a radiological study published
by Diagnostic Imaging translated from English into German by a computer-based
translation program. I have attempted a retranslation into English, to approximate
the impact of the uproarious gibberish on a German-only reader [1]. But
pass on the laughter; the problem is serious. Of course, computers cannot handle
the subtleties of a language. Yet there are those who insist that computer translations
are an elegant way to help people understand foreign languages. Translating simple
sentences or technical texts ought to be easy for a computer, they say. Surely
a computer can translate the phrase: “The hospital is big and the patients
are sick”. Perhaps
so, but if you apply translation software to more complex matters such as a radiological
report, the health of a patient can be seriously compromised. Translation
software, like that Google supplies for its search engines on the internet accomplish
what reading glasses do for the illiterate.
"Translation
software, like that Google supplies for its search engines on the internet accomplish
what reading glasses do for the illiterate. It takes the human brain to accurately
render medical terms from English to another language."
For
slightly more difficult sentences you need a translator, a person who is able
to understand the medical and literal context and interprets it – or you
learn the language yourself, because in many instances the literal translation
makes no sense in another language. This, however, a computer does not know. From
time immemorial, it was an advantage to be able to parley the language of the
neighboring tribe or even a people living further away. As time went by, the lingua
franca system developed. The language of a tribe or people travelling, trading,
or simply “pacifying” other tribes or people would become the connecting
language. In Europe this was Greek, later Latin for nearly two millennia. Outside
factors often changed the usage of a language. One example: When you walked through
the streets of Berlin 300 years ago and didn’t know your way, the best language
to address a stranger was French. One quarter of the population was French because
religious tolerance in France was at its low during the reign of Louis XIV. More
than 20.000 French Protestants had fled to Prussia which used to offer sanctuary
to immigrants and refugees from numerous countries. The language at the Prussian
court was French, and King Frederick William I wrote better French than German.
French
remained the language of diplomacy and upper class conversation until the years
between the World Wars. German became the language of science, replacing Latin,
in the nineteenth century. Again the second World War brought this to an end. Since
the Germans had lost both wars, they did not complain about the loss of German
as a leading lingua franca. The French did and still do. The late president of
France, Georges Pompidou once stated: “We must not let the idea take hold
that English is the only possible instrument for industrial, economic and scientific
communication.” [2] He
was right, it could be Russian or German, or even returning to Latin; of course,
he thought of French. The present French president is said to speak better Russian
than English – but he speaks both languages. The Italian and Spanish prime
ministers need interpreters even for English. Clearly, they are at a disadvantage.
In general, the lower your social and professional status, the less likely you
are to speak English. Status increases with the number of languages spoken. Nearly
one quarter of the population of the European Union speak German as their first
language. English, French, and Italian as first languages are only spoken by some
16% each. However, 47% of EU citizens say they can speak English, 31% of them
as a foreign language. Today
you have situations where radiologists from the French-speaking part of Belgium
talk to their colleagues from the Dutch-speaking part in English. The same holds
for Switzerland. German speakers talk in English to their counterparts from Geneva
or Lausanne. Some
of the foes of English as the universal language stress that the ubiquity of English
ensures Anglo-American superiority around the world, and it is difficult to refute
this argument. Although British impact is limited, US-American economic and cultural
influence is strong – after the U.S.A. won both World Wars. With the victory
came the influence one encounters everywhere. International
and national radiological conferences are proud if speakers from the United States
are present. Many members of the young European radiological elite would emigrate
to the United States if it were possible. The leading German publisher of radiological
books has a series dubbed “US Art”. Radiology, the main journal
of the Radiological Society of North America still is the leading scientific journal
in medical imaging. The
English spoken in Europe, however, is neither British nor US-American (whatever
British English might be if you have ever tried to understand a taxi driver in
London or Liverpool or a medical doctor from Yorkshire). It has little in common
with the melodic singing of the Irish or Scots. Its more modern orthography owes
its allegiance less to the Cambridge in England than to the Cambridge in Massachusetts.
“Euro-Fizz” English is spoken with Continental accents and written à
l‘Americain. On
the whole, English has become a stateless language. The global number of non-native
English speakers is about four times larger than that of its native speakers;
today there may be as many non-native dialects of English as there are native
dialects. I
am amused when I read job advertisements in the newspapers offering certain positions
only to “native English speakers”. What is a native English speaker
– a British, Irish, Australian, Indian, South African, US American, Canadian?
It is better to look for “advanced written and verbal English language skills”
as other advertisements demand.
"A
non-native English speaker is often better for a non-native English-speaking audience."
Often
it is advantageous to have a non-native English speaker for a non-native English-speaking
audience. I have been involved in arranging radiological teaching courses for
more than two decades and now prefer to use non-native English speakers for such
courses. Native English speakers with a strong dialect such as those from Texas
and Yorkshire can be particularly difficult for an international audience. The
participants don‘t understand them, no matter how pedagogically and scientifically
expert they are. In
Europe, English is likely to develop into a kind of Euro-American hybrid with
an increasing part of the vocabulary being imported from Continental Europe. Sooner
or later there might be a lobby “Keep our English clean” similar to
the French lobby “Keep the Anglicisms out of our French”. Perhaps the
same people could take over the new movement. Many
native English speakers watch the development proudly because their language leads
the world. However, they might wake up one morning and not understand their own
language any more. This
has happened to linguae francae before. The Latin spoken during the height of
the Roman Empire remained the language of the better educated. But the dialects
spoken throughout the Empire varied and developed into different major Romance
languages: Italian with all its dialects, French and its dialects, Catalan, Spanish,
Portuguese, you name them. Look at the English spoken in former British colonies:
Pidgin English idioms are languages of their own. A
persistent problem for many native English speakers is that for them English is
not only the first, but in many instances the only language they know. For all
others, English is the second, third or fourth language. They can switch languages
and return to their mother tongue at will. English-only speakers are excluded
from this flexibility. Today,
scientific success in disciplines like medicine, pharmacy, physics, chemistry,
or psychology on an international level is impossible without a thorough knowledge
of English. There is no advantage for the individual researcher, for patients,
or for the entire scientific discipline if one insists on talking or publishing
in a language other than English – except if the target audience is limited
to people speaking another mother tongue. In this case it will be advantageous
to use that language. Languages
are taught at school, mostly at the secondary, sometimes already at the primary
school level in all European countries. On average, school children in Luxembourg
learn 2.9 languages, in the Flemish part of Belgium 1.9 (1.4 in the French part).
French children learn 1.7 languages in average, German 1.2, Italian and English
1.1. These
children might use computers to learn a foreign language, but hopefully they will
avoid translation software programs. These software programs will remain ersatz.
If you don’t understand English you better learn it. This holds not only
for radiologists, but also for politicians and administrators. Today
most EU documents are translated into a dozen languages; a task that keeps several
hundred, possibly thousands of translators busy and paid. I believe that not only
radiologists should speak a second language, but it should be a requirement for
politicians in Brussels too. It would save money and misunderstandings. | 
December 2001
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Reference: Rinck PA: Rinckside - Europe gets entangled
in complex language web. Diagnostic Imaging Europe. 2001; 17,12: 22-23.
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