FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[stumpy]

Why the hell aren't these magazines ( https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?t=1116 ) published in English? After all, it is the universal language of science and the only true "world" language. It seems stupid to restrict their potential readership by publishing in minority languages like Italian and German. After all, in how many countries are these languages actually used by the majority of people? German: Germany, Switzerland, Austria; Italian: erm, Italy. Most educated people in these countries can read English reasonably well anyway. Bit of common sense needed here, methinks!

S.

[Jesse Fisher]

English may be the language of commerce but it's use in the scientific literature is FAR from universal. Your implication that being conversant in English is a requirement for being an"educated" person seems rather chauvinistic and parochial. Have you ever spent any time traveling in the countries you mention?

[stumpy]

Yes I have visited these countries several times, as well as more than 30 others worldwide, but I don't see how this is relevant. And it is the Italians who are being parochial by publishing a journal in Italian, when theirs is the only country in which Italian is the majority language.

I did not imply that being conversant in English is a requirement for being an"educated" person, I said that most educated people in these countries can read English reasonably well. (To see the flaw in your logic, this would mean that for example, if most mineral collectors are men, it implies that being a man is a requirement for being a mineral collector!)

S.

[str4hler]

I love mineral magazines in languages that I don't know very well.
I'm subscribed to some of them in German, Spanish, Italian, French and English.
Japanese is more problematic, but I love to see it :)

It's a fun and great way to learn those languages a little better.

The problem is not that those superb magazines are in Italian etc
The problem is that you don't try to learn that language ;)
That's common sense to me :-)

Cheers! Frank (de Wit)
(from Holland)

p.s.: what I don't like, are people writing anonimously / under pseudo's
p.s.2: is "me thinks" english?

[Jordi Fabre]

Is not sense for me that you find parochial that Italians, living in Italy and speaking Italian, wish publish his own magazine in his own language.

I believe that if they miss readers or customers it is his problem, they do the effort to build a magazine and I believe that they can do it in the language they want.

The world is complex and sophisticated and different languages contribute to its richness, why simplify it?
Maybe you could find a kind of happiness learning the wonderful Italian language and then you could not only read the beautiful Rivista Mineralogica but also enjoy sharing talks with Italians when you visit the marvelous Italy.

Jordi Fabre
(speaking several languages and coordinator and builder of an English Forum although my native languages are Catalan and Spanish ;-)

[stumpy]

Frank, I appreciate your point of view, and incidentally, I do speak and read several other languages besides English. However, I cannot learn languages just to read mineral magazines.

Jordi, the description you have given is exactly the definition of "parochial"!! My point is that it is somewhat limiting to publish this magazine in Italian and to rule out a potential worldwide readership.

S.

P.S. And what is "str4hler", if not a pseudonym?
P.P.S. Yes, "methinks" is English - look in a dictionary.

[str4hler]

No, str4hler is not a pseudonym, it my login name, you cannot change that after you created your account

My name is in my posting ; Frank de Wit ; Google it and you will see that I use it everywhere on the internet, on www.strahlen.org , on facebook, no secrets there

But your name is?

Mr. S ?

I would be happy to hear your full name, that makes talking a lot more nice ; exchanging a real name is a sort of handshake in real life ; like looking into eachothers eyes...

Frank

[stumpy]

No, I'm sorry Frank, but the best way to stay safe and secure online is never to give out any personal information, including one's real name. No offence meant by that.

S.

[Tobi]

[Peter]

Genau Tobias
Vad i Heklafjäll Stumpy!

[GneissWare]

As a native English speaking person (that is assuming Californian counts!), and as a scientist with an advanced degree, I have found that one misses out on a great deal of knowledge if one confines oneself to English. A huge amount of scientific research in the fields of mineralogy and geology was conducted in German and Russian by scientists from their respective countries. Although I read very little German, it was clear from my research that German has a level of technical descriptiveness and precision that English cannot match. So, why wouldn't a researcher publish in the language that he can be most expressive. Many of the references I used in my graduate studies were not in English because because no English speaking scientist had contributed to the portion of the field I was researching.

Although I can't proficiently read any language but English, I immensely enjoy my mineral books written in German, Italian, Spanish and even Chinese. It is relatively easy to decode the text in the western languages for technical terms. It is much more difficult to decipher the historical information, and it would be helpful to me to have this information in English, but I believe if you have an interest in the minerals from a non-English speaking country, you should at least try to immerse yourself into the language.

My 2 cents.
Bob

[alfredo]

It should also be pointed out that, although english is of course the dominant language in commerce and science, that is not the case in the mineral collector world, where german language magazines and books far outsell english language ones!

(For this reason, german language mineral collector magazines can afford to actually pay their authors, which english language magazines can't - insufficient circulation to be profitable.)

[Jesse Fisher]

Very good point, Alfredo. I am constantly amazed at how few native English-speaking collectors actually subscribe to journals in their own language. What motivation is there for someone publishing in French, German, Italian or other "minority" languages to go to the effort of publishing an English-language version if the subscriber base for that language is actually the minority audience? It would be interesting, and perhaps add some actual facts to the discussion if we could compare the numbers of subscribers to the various journals, including the MR, Rocks & Minerals, UKJMM, Le Regne Mineral, Lapis, Mineralien Welt, and Rivista Mineralogica. Regardless, I strongly suspect that if English-speaking collectors are reluctant to subscribe to their own domestic publications, the likelihood that many will subscribe to a foreign journal is low, regardless of the language it's published in.

[Peter]

The Norwegian Mineral magazine Stein is written in primarily Norwegian and Swedish. Circulation if I remember correctly is something like 8000 as every mineral clubs membership in Norway includes this subscription. Very clever Norway!!!

Now why in the world would Norwegians want to write in English for pehaps 10 subscribers, while the norwegian language is very beautiful and descriptive, much more so than English (no offense). Articles are treating a lot of localities in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greenland and often also trip reports from Namibia or other ww regions.

Even if you do not understand any Scandinavian languages, can not pronounce or understand the meaning of Eyafjallajökull, I am sure a photo of a 5 cm anatase crystal and the pocket it came from will be of interest !

I fully agree, much geological and mineralogical litterature´in German, Russian and Scandinavian languages, even French carries much which is little in the English speaking world. The Mineralogical Almanac has played a keyroll to open the eyes for many westerners but is a mere hint of the research done in the east!

[Paul S]

Maybe a good solution to this problem is providing the subscribers of a magazine with a digital version that can be translated by something like Google Translator. This will not give a perfect translation, but that way it will be possible to get a good understanding of an article.

Magazine producers will probably be very reluctant to spread digital copies among their subscribers, so we will have to translate the parts of a magazine ourselves with those (online) translators.

[str4hler]

A small group of friends, together, try to keep track of mineralogical articles in ca.200 magazines/publications ; published monthly, quarterly or irregular ; and I'm sure we miss a few...

Just for fun I took 30 minutes to mark the language of each publication.
(Schweizer Strahler is written both in French and German, I counted it in both languages ; MineralUP/Revista de Minerales idem, etc) ; The list ranges from popular magazines like Lapis, R&M, RMI, Ami Micro, MinRec etc ; over professional magazines like Am.Min., Can.Min., EJM etc etc to little club magazines)

The score.......:
English: 85
German: 29
French: 27
Italian: 15
Dutch: 15
Spanish: 13
Scandinavian (I threw them together, sorry Peter ;) 7
Others: 26 (the Czech, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Greek etc that are little more difficult to read)

I have no idea what conclusions I would even want to draw from those statistics other than that statistics always lie... But ca.60% of the publications are not written in English. And I would hate to miss 60% of the information on new&interesting mineral localities (which is of course also published in english magazines and/or mineral forums, blogs etc. and often not written down at all :-). But still: I'm convinced that, if you field-collect worldwide, like I like&try to do, I would miss a lot of interesting info if I would only read the MinRec ;)

Cheers! Frank

[lluis]

Hi, Frank

And do not forget the ones written in catalan.
A minority language that have more speakers than danish, swedish, norwigean and several others....

By the way, as mother speaker of a latin based language, I speak french, spanish and catalan Well, Jordi ays that I never will be confused with a parisien... :-) )
But I can read without touble portuges, italian, romanian and reto romanic.
And with my german and english I can figure out what is written in dutch...

Gosh, I plan to travel to Japan and I am worried to learn some speaked japanese ...
That would make me feel better.

To learn an idiom, and as a son of a small land for me is important, adds more knowledge of others peoples

Not a bad thing, in my opinion

Lluís


P.D.: remember the time when spanish was the universal language, then french in diplomacy, then english, then...

[Carles Millan]

[stumpy]

[stumpy]

In response to all your comments, perhaps it is sufficient to ask you to consider which language we are using on this forum? Do you seriously think it would be better if we all wrote our messages in our native tongues?