Dear Catalan Archaeologists,
Feb. 15th, 2006 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hmpfany kind of scientific research is ultimately a collaborative effort. We all build on the foundations laid by previous generations, and our thinking needs to connect with what other people in our field and adjacent fields are thinking, as well. There can be no real progress without collaboration.
The basic requirement of collaboration, however, is communication. To make communication with your fellow researchers possible, you need to publish in a language they can understand. Hint: Catalan is not a language most archaeologists understand.
Believe me, I understand about the plight of small languages, and I'd like to see them saved, all of them. By all means, write novels, write poetry, write whatever you like in Catalan. Have a whole literary renaissance! But please, choose a language that more than perhaps two dozen archaeologists in the world understand to publish your excavation reports. Your reports would be more accessible to the vast majority of archaeologists if you published them in *Latin*, for heaven's sake! (I still wouldn't be able to read them, but I'm fairly certain there are more archaeologists who know Latin than there are archaeologists who know Catalan.)
Sincerely,
Me.
***
Really, sometimes I wish archaeologists would take a page from the sciences' book, and start publishing predominantly in English. People in the Middle Ages were cleverer than us in that respect, it seems: they had a language of science: Latin. What a great idea, to write all scientific works in *one* language, so that every scientist, no matter from what country, could understand them! I hear you, people who are concerned about English taking over the world at the expense of all the other languages. I don't want to see that happen, either. I love English, but I don't want to live in a monolingual world. But in this one area, it would make an awful lot of sense to me to ditch national pride or regional pride or whatever, and go with the most widely understood language in the world. (Though I'd be happy to settle for Spanish or French, if necessary, in this particular case.)
Research, studying, is about communication, about cross-pollination, about getting different views on things, and about getting the big picture. It sometimes seems to me that the field of archaeology, in particular, doesn't like this idea at all. Instead, every country, and even, in some cases, certain *parts* of certain countries, are "doing their own thing", even to the point of making it ridiculously difficult for any archaeologist who does not happen to know Catalan, or Sardic, or (insert struggling, small European regional language of your choice), to get a clear view of what's been written about the region in question. Although we do not try to prove that our own 'team' is 'the best' anymore (an awful lot of archaeology used to be about this kind of thing - especially in Germany), we still seem to be firmly entrenched in the age of nationalism ('cause 'regionalism' is just another kind of nationalism, really). What's so wrong about making the results of your research accessible?
... Okay. Rant over. I'm putting the 'meta' icon on this, although it's not fannish meta... but I don't have any Real Life or archaeology icons.
The basic requirement of collaboration, however, is communication. To make communication with your fellow researchers possible, you need to publish in a language they can understand. Hint: Catalan is not a language most archaeologists understand.
Believe me, I understand about the plight of small languages, and I'd like to see them saved, all of them. By all means, write novels, write poetry, write whatever you like in Catalan. Have a whole literary renaissance! But please, choose a language that more than perhaps two dozen archaeologists in the world understand to publish your excavation reports. Your reports would be more accessible to the vast majority of archaeologists if you published them in *Latin*, for heaven's sake! (I still wouldn't be able to read them, but I'm fairly certain there are more archaeologists who know Latin than there are archaeologists who know Catalan.)
Sincerely,
Me.
***
Really, sometimes I wish archaeologists would take a page from the sciences' book, and start publishing predominantly in English. People in the Middle Ages were cleverer than us in that respect, it seems: they had a language of science: Latin. What a great idea, to write all scientific works in *one* language, so that every scientist, no matter from what country, could understand them! I hear you, people who are concerned about English taking over the world at the expense of all the other languages. I don't want to see that happen, either. I love English, but I don't want to live in a monolingual world. But in this one area, it would make an awful lot of sense to me to ditch national pride or regional pride or whatever, and go with the most widely understood language in the world. (Though I'd be happy to settle for Spanish or French, if necessary, in this particular case.)
Research, studying, is about communication, about cross-pollination, about getting different views on things, and about getting the big picture. It sometimes seems to me that the field of archaeology, in particular, doesn't like this idea at all. Instead, every country, and even, in some cases, certain *parts* of certain countries, are "doing their own thing", even to the point of making it ridiculously difficult for any archaeologist who does not happen to know Catalan, or Sardic, or (insert struggling, small European regional language of your choice), to get a clear view of what's been written about the region in question. Although we do not try to prove that our own 'team' is 'the best' anymore (an awful lot of archaeology used to be about this kind of thing - especially in Germany), we still seem to be firmly entrenched in the age of nationalism ('cause 'regionalism' is just another kind of nationalism, really). What's so wrong about making the results of your research accessible?
... Okay. Rant over. I'm putting the 'meta' icon on this, although it's not fannish meta... but I don't have any Real Life or archaeology icons.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
*giggles*
Date: 2006-02-15 10:13 pm (UTC)Aaah, good thoughts. ;)
Hwyl am nawr,
Becka.
The sad thing is..
Date: 2006-02-15 11:00 pm (UTC)Re: The sad thing is..
Date: 2006-02-16 07:55 am (UTC)(Err, that is, I *am* a Welsh speaking Welsh nationalist, but I'm not quite as Welsh speaking or nationalistic as, err, some.)
Becka.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 10:30 pm (UTC)There was a move to publish certain reports in Gaelic...
Sympathy.
Hah! Love your icon!
Date: 2006-02-15 10:59 pm (UTC)And... Gaelic?! Wow. That would be even worse than Catalan. At least Catalan is fairly similar to Spanish, even if they put strange dots in the middle of their words ("col.lectio", for example. Don't ask me how the dot is pronounced! *g*)
Re: Hah! Love your icon!
Date: 2006-02-16 07:18 pm (UTC)OK.
The move to publish in Gaelic came to a rather sad end. It became mildly obvious that...there didn't seem to be an archaeologist in Scotland who, er, spoke the language... *g*
*snerk*
Date: 2006-02-18 11:18 pm (UTC)And Sardic archaeologists, too. (Though that was a different paper, years ago.)
no subject
Date: 2006-02-16 12:03 am (UTC)Well, at least...
Date: 2006-02-18 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-16 01:01 am (UTC)Oh, I hear you.
Date: 2006-02-18 11:36 pm (UTC)"Lacking excavations, it is uncommon to dispose of reliable information about the architecture of Breton abbeys of the early Middle Ages, which was practically unknown for the Merovingian period."
(What exactly was unknown for the Merovingian period?)
"Its qualities are heat-resistance, oven-proof, very resistant to thermal shock, and heat-retaining, thus ideal for cauldrons and cooking-pots."
(*cries*)
"Later (1008-40), Alan III had coins Alamnus/Redonis, which were imitations of Déols coins (123)."
(Aside from the fact that this is a fairly nonsensical sentence, the illustration to go with it also didn't show anything even *remotely* resembling a coin.)
"The third Life, describing the rebuilding of the cathedral and the monastery, can only concern the end of the eleventh century or the beginning of the next, when the so-called Hastings tower, the name of a Scandinavian chief who would have caused the vacancy of the see during 90 years."
(I think they hit the delete button there, somewhere.)
"The annals of the capital town of Austrasia, Annales Francorum Metenses, show for the period when, since 687, the Austrasian palace mayor Pepin II of Herstall dominated simultaneously Neustria and Austrasia, and then in 691 became the only chief of the Franks. These very dry and succinct annals do not specify who these Bretons or British were, or where the fights took place." (... Bretons? Which Bretons? Also, part of the first sentence is clearly missing. The delete button strikes again, methinks.)
They also had interesting ideas about where to put commas:
"It is therefore, inaccurate..."
Also nice: Starting a chapter with a comparison to... what exactly, you don't tell the reader:
"Better conditions for wood preservation exist in the northern parts of Europe."
Better than *where*, pray tell?!? I kid you not, this was the first sentence of the chapter. No, it doesn't refer to anything in the previous chapter, either.
Arrgh.
So, yeah, I see your point. But I still think that it would be better to publish papers and essays in a language that a large number of other scientists understand, not in a small regional language spoken by maybe a dozen of people in your field.
Heh. You're an editor of a scholarly journal? Wow. Isn't that an incredibly hard job to get? I always thought you needed a fairly impressive academic resume to get a position like that, and aren't you a lot younger than me? Then again, things in the U.S. may be quite different than over here, and everybody knows that students in Germany are just ridiculously old, and therefore people who get the good academic positions hereabouts are even older.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 12:18 am (UTC)And I'm just an assistant, so I make sure the references are valid and do the primary formatting. Nothing requiring too much intelligence.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-18 11:21 am (UTC)I have a book about Ancient Egypt in German. I don't understand a word of it (apart from possibly recognising the word for "Egypt" and "Egyptian" because they aren't much different). Mum rescued it from the library (who were getting rid because it's not in English, obviously) and gave it to me saying (and I quote), "If you can't understand it, at least you can look at the pictures". Er yeah, helpful(!)
But I think I get what you mean, even though that is my only incidence of an archaeology book in a different language. And I think you're right. More people would understand a book written in Latin than one written in Catalan - even I could, and I don't know *much* Latin. Hee.
Well, you know, if it *had* nice pictures, then certainly...
Date: 2006-02-18 11:39 pm (UTC)Anyway, German is not exactly as exotic as Catalan. I know not everybody knows German, but it *is* still among the better known languages in the field.
Re: Well, you know, if it *had* nice pictures, then certainly...
Date: 2006-02-19 10:27 pm (UTC)And no, German is not as exotic as Catalan, I agree, but it's the only foreign -language-archaeology-book I've got. Heh. Although I do have some Spanish books...but from what you've said, I gather Catalan varies from "normal" Spanish...Um...I shall shut up now...
:)
Can I help...
Date: 2006-02-18 02:57 pm (UTC)I don't know.
Date: 2006-02-18 11:37 pm (UTC)Re: I don't know.
Date: 2006-02-20 01:36 am (UTC)Actually, yeah, you probably can help me.
Date: 2006-02-20 07:03 pm (UTC)Re: Actually, yeah, you probably can help me.
Date: 2006-03-03 10:44 pm (UTC)