I had to work with a book published by a team of French archaeologists once - in English, but they obviously had a fairly poor grasp of the language, as well as a poor grasp of their text editing software. Here's a few examples:
"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*)
"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.
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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.