| Hello guys, interesting topic here. I don't wanna talk much about business stuffs, but just found some discussion by Roger not quite realistic at all. He argued that scientific papers should all be published in Chinese journals using the Chinese language. I mean, hey man, what's the point here? First off, whether you accept it or not, like it or dislike it, it's already a fact that English is by all means the international language, especially in academia. Science is also to some extent an art of communication, you don't expect to make great distributions to the scientific world while working alone, I mean this is extremely true in today's world. Maybe it worked out doing all things by oneself 50 years ago, but no way right now. So the question comes down to how do we communicate with colleague elsewhere around the world. Because we simply cannot afford to recruit an interpreter each time we speak with others, we just need to speak one language, and precisely English. It might not be your mother tongue, but it makes things easier and the collaborations more efficient. And I'm sorry, Roger, but your idea to write Chinese using the Romanic letters, the so-called pinyin, is just ridiculous. There is no such in-between in Chinese. Character is the soul of Mandarin, the basic component and at the same time of course irreplaceable. Writing pinyin is just something to help you know the exact pronunciation, not the way to communicate. I would bet neither native Chinese nor westerners would understand an article written in pinyin without problems, even so they do, it takes simply much more time. And after all, why doesn't Jianshuo publish his blog purely in Mandarin? So if you happen to be a hard-core advocate of Chinese language, you could say something like, aha, how complex this beautiful language is! It's simply not possible for all those foreigners to grasp it. So let's speak English, it's easier...(of course I don't mean that at all) Good luck to all! Cheers, Jie |
Diversity, Consistency, and Efficiency - Part II