Gordin, Ragab, Schäfer, Frasen, Terrall, Aronova (2017)

ARTIGOS DA SEÇÃO FOCUS DO V. 108, N. 3 DA ISIS.

Gordin (2017) - Introduction: Hegemonic Languages and Science

• Abstract: Science has historically been a multilingual enterprise, yet the present day appears to belie this generalization. It is difficult to deny the observation that the natural sciences today have converged to a state where a particular form of English—variously termed “Global English,” “International English,” or “English as a Lingua Franca”— serves as the almost universal language of interaction among scientific practitioners.The history of science demonstrates that many other languages have served (and, in many contexts, still do) for scientific and scholarly interchange. The unusual feature about the past several decades is not that the dominant language of the natural sciences is English (as opposed to, say, German or Russian or Chinese) but that it is a single language. This Focus section seeks to open up avenues of inquiry that would put both the past and the present of science into conversation, along this axis of translation and hegemonic languages. In addition to outlining the contributions—which explore the cases of Arabic, Chinese, Latin, French, and Russian over a millennium—this introduction addresses the charged question of English.

• One of the most important lessons from my reading, however, is that hegemonic language regimes have not, historically, been totalizing; these languages were always significantly conditioned by the medium of communication (oral, written), the intended audience, and the kind of knowledge being communicated. That point also holds for English today, although its dominance within the sciences is much greater than any of these historical examples. (Whether that is a difference in degree or in kind is a matter of intense debate.18) Any attempt to write the history of even very recent science that fails to consider the possible linguistic dimensions—even if those aspects are in turn discounted as not relevant— will always be incomplete. Potentially significant, often informal, aspects of scientific practice can take place in multiple idioms even in an Anglophone world of print. As a corollary, we as a community need to pay more attention, even in Anglophone situations, to what kind of English is being used: native speaker or not, formal writing or casual note taking, slang, American, South Asian, Singaporean, and so on. None of the languages discussed in the following essays were static entities, and they all bore the traces of the historical moment in which we find them. It is a dimension that we cannot afford to ignore, in scholarship or with each other.

Ragab (2017) - "In a clear arabic tongue": Arabic and making of a Science language regime.

• Abstract: The history of Arabic as a language of scientific learning is punctuated by two “translation movements.” The first took place in the ninth century, when many scientific and philosophical Greek, Persian, and Indian works were translated into Arabic under the patronage of members of the Abbasid dynasty (750–1258 in Baghdad) and their clients and courtiers. The second was sparked by the establishment of European-style schools in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century and witnessed the translation of modern European scientific texts into Arabic. In both cases, translation was a complex and iterative process where scholars, translators, and patrons grappled with questions about the history of the language, its relation to other languages, and its attendant opportunities and limitations. This essay looks at these two moments of translation, asking how such processes took place, what questions emerged, and how they related to other intellectual, political, and social concerns at the time. It argues that translation efforts did not emerge from or lead to an exclusively Arabophone setting but, rather, developed in a linguistic regime that involved constant connections with other languages and relied on the gradual and iterative construction of an Arabic scientific archive that defined the role and the history of Arabic as a scientific language.

• “If you need to know the basics [of Arabic] to translate, you must know [much more] to perfect the translation and avoid mistakes. . . . For a language does not correspond to another in all its  aspects including nouns, verbs, propositions, metaphors [etc].” Questão de terminologia.

• “When [the book] was compiled, [Clot] dictated it to [Doctor] Muhạ mmad al-Shāfiʾī in French, and he translated it in the best way possible. Then he gave [the translation] to master Perron and asked him and me to correct it avoiding complicated terms and structures, and to only use well-known terms even if colloquial so that [the book] would benefit both the educated and the ignorant.” Questão de terminologia.

• Here, I propose “linguistic regime” as an analytical category that captures such complex relationships. A linguistic regime is formed of various languages that exist in a dynamic relationship where some languages (in this case Arabic) rise to the top and accrue a variety of privileges for political, economic, or other reasons. More important, in a linguistic regime languages acquire different roles based on discipline and on the identity of the speaker or writer, among other variables. In all cases, the relations and movement across different languages in a linguistic regime affect the ways in which knowledge is produced and practiced. Lembra o polissistema de Zohar.

• As Marwa Elshakry has demonstrated, the interest in scientific texts extended to magazines, popular books, and other publications, where European scientific texts were regularly summarized, translated, and published.

• The goal was not only to find terms with a long history in Arabic to translate modern European concepts, but also to create an archive that would help in translating additional terms—a goal embodied in the glossary project. Elshakry demonstrates that a similar process took place in the various scientific translations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: authors and translators often looked to medieval texts for terms before attempting to create new ones. [...] On the one hand, it provided an example of Arabic as a language of original scientific production and an argument against claims of its inability to host scientific knowledge. On the other, medieval texts provided a linguistic resource that translators and authors drew on in a variety of ways. History also figures in the attempts to answer the question, “Why translate?” Opponents of translation argue that such a process isolates Arabic speakers from rapidly developing scientific knowledge. Proponents of translation argue that it is the only way for such speakers to become contributors to, and not just consumers of, scientific knowledge.

• “Science” here was not a neutral descriptor of specific intellectual activities. It was, rather, a value-laden term that denoted commitment to particular epistemic virtues. Medieval translators engaged with questions of word choice and the production of meaning in their work. Modern and contemporary translators had to contend with the complex meanings of science in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Here, a dominant positivist narrative of the universality of modern science and its rapid and continuous progress shaped the requirements for a scientific language. Arabic needed to reflect the universality of this discourse, and infrastructures (of dedicated translators, schools, and publishers) were needed to anticipate such rapid development fully.

Schäfer (2017). Thinking in many tongues: Language(s) and late Imperial China's science.

• Abstract: A society and scholarly culture united in its use of one language dominates the general view of Late Imperial China’s sciences. Recent studies have suggested, however, that in the past, as in the present, multilingual practices might have been the norm. Asian-language historians have shown that Chinese script embraced many tongues, intonating the characters in different dialects and giving them new meanings in Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese. Rather than assuming that a hegemonic approach to language was a given in historical China, this essay suggests that we should ask why—or even if—this was the case, given that scientific knowledge was continuously transmitted to China from other learned traditions (Persian, Indian, European) and that new objects and practices enteredChinese learned discourse fromdiverse vernacular cultures that flourished on the local level throughout the empire.The essay discusses howto understand scientific and technological developments against changing views of Late Imperial China as a culture enmeshed in plurilingual practices.

• In this essay I look at how Tymoczko’s 2006 proposal for the broadening of translation was one of many cues prompting historians to review the structural premises through which language was historically understood, used, replicated, and revised. The first half unfolds the relation between the politics of language and expertise in the difficult case of the Ming dynasty. The Ming has long been considered a “native” dynasty in which Chinese constituted the norm (and in fact is often assumed to have been the only linguistic competence of scholars); in contrast, historians have studied the multiple languages of the Qing dynasty, generally considered to be a “foreign” dynasty, in depth. I then touch briefly on approaches to Late Ming and Qing sciences against the background of the broadening concepts of language and an “East Asian writing system” and illustrate how a “global Chinese” facilitated actors’ skill in thinking in many tongues.

• Na dinastia Ming o governo traduzia seus documentos para as línguas dos principais povos que faziam parte do império.

• Historians of China’s sciences (similar to those of contemporary English) regularly interpret loan words, borrowings, calques, or the mixing of languages as a sign of foreign influence that nevertheless ultimately underlines the dominance of Chinese and the monolingual condition of language competence among Chinese scholars.

• Most important, rather than assuming that a hegemonic approach to language—a competence in one language for the sake of scientific understanding—was a given or a necessity, it might be worthwhile to ask why—or even if—such a hegemonic scientific language was the norm in historical China, given that scientific knowledge was continuously transmitted to China from other learned traditions (Persian, Indian, European) and that new objects and practices entered Chinese learned discourse from varied and extremely diverse vernacular cultures that flourished on the local level throughout the empire. A closer examination of understudied sources such as the Local Gazetteers (difang zhi 地方志) may reveal that the “monolingual” character of “standardized” Classical Chinese scientific discourse was in fact challenged by regional diversity as much as by foreign influx. If not, the single-mindedness of learned Chinese would appear all the more remarkable and in need of explanation.

Frasen (2017) - Latin in a time of change.

• Abstract: This essay discusses three authors from the early seventeenth century (Galileo, Descartes, and Van Helmont) and the reasons that guided their decisions to write occasionally in their respective vernacular languages even though Latin remained the accepted language for learned communication. From their writings we can see that their choices were social, political, and always of high importance. The choice of language of these multilingual authors conveyed a message that was sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit. Their usage of both Latin and vernacular proved, on the one hand, their place in the international learned community and, on the other hand, their interest and investment in changing the educational system.

• While education occurred in Latin, an increasing number of books appeared in vernacular languages.

• In general, literacy in early modern society increased, which meant that authors could presume a larger audience, made up in part of more readers closer to home. Michael Gordin argues that this rise in literacy might have been a reason for more learned publications in the vernaculars.

• "I wrote in the vernacular because I must have everyone able to read it, and for the same reason I wrote my last book in this language. I am induced to do this by seeing how youngmen are sent through the universities at random to be made physicians, philosophers, and so on; thus many of them are committed to professions for which they are unsuited, while other men who would be fitted for these are taken up by family cares and other occupations remote from literature. . . .Now I want them to see that just as nature has given to them, as well as to the philosophers, eyes with which to see her works, so she has also given them brains capable of penetrating and understanding them" (Galileu).

• However, many people outside of Italy were not able to understand his Italian, which in turn meant that most of his Italian works were (quickly) translated into Latin, thus enabling them to reach a wider audience. Esse paradoxo se repete para o francês de Descartes e o holandês de Helmont.

• Van Helmont was daunted by the prospect of having to invent many new phrases (Redens-Arten) to express his ideas. Questão de equivalência.

• All in all, the choice of language for writing science had a major impact on the reception of these works in terms of the initial audience and the authority bestowed by the particular language. As we have seen, most works would eventually reach the European community at large after publication in Latin, not through the vernacular. Latin was therefore an intermediary and hegemonic language for science, hugely important for international communication and exchange in the seventeenth-century scientific community. Since there was as yet no alternative international language that could take over that role, Latin retained its dominant place. Authors who had a choice of language were able to put their multilingualism to use in order to reach various audiences, while making statements—implicit or more overt—about new directions in science.

Terrall (2017) - French in the siècle des lumières: A universal language?

• Abstract: In the eighteenth century, French extended its domain over the natural sciences at the expense of Latin, without entirely displacing it. Nor did it definitively supersede other vernaculars for scientific purposes. Scientific disputes and exchanges across language and geographical boundaries depended on a reservoir of overlapping language skills and translation strategies. These varied from case to case; this essay considers cases that illuminate the complex dynamics among languages, framed by the widespread use of French. Examples considered here show the complexity of the linguistic layering in eighteenth-century European science.

Aronova (2017) - Russian and the making of world languages during the Cold War

• Abstract: This essay uses the case of Russian, in its relation to other languages, to look athe ways in which the architects of internationalism in the aftermath of World War II established a new hegemony of world languages, responding to the challenge posed by the rise of Russian as a scientific and political language. What was initially a campaign by the Soviet delegation at UNESCO for one cause—recognition of the status of the Russian language within the organization—was turned by other delegations into a campaign for a different cause—multilingualism. Rather than establishing Russian on a par with English and French, the Soviet intervention helped to create a new triumvirate of world languages—Russian, Spanish, and Arabic—as these were recognized by international organizations such as the United Nations and UNESCO. The case of the rise of Russian as a language of science and politics helps to underscore the complexities and the ambiguities involved in the negotiation of the language regime, in which political arguments were translated into technological choices, the diplomats’ problems were cast as a problem of communication, and the language in which political arguments were made oftentimes mattered as much as the arguments themselves.

• “The spread of the knowledge of Russian beyond our fatherland’s borders is an extraordinarily important matter. It testifies to the growing world power of the Soviet Union. . . . Millions . . . are studying the Russian language. At the large conferences . . . of democratic international congresses . . . nearly always there is no need to translate from Russian. Soviet delegates are often understood when they speak Russian. The Russian language has become a world language. . . . The succession of world languages runs through all the millennia of mankind’s history. Latin was the language of the ancient world. . . . French was the language . . . of the feudal epoch. . . . English became the world language of capitalism. Looking . . . into the future, we see Russian as the world language of socialism. . . . [It] is the first world language of internationalism. . . . World science . . . developed predominantly in English [and] French, and also in German. . . . In the world of scientists, the Russian language was looked at disdainfully. . . . This time is moving into the past. Nowadays no one can call oneself a scientist . . . if he does not know Russian. . . . Soviet scientists are moving forward in all areas of science and technology. . . . The time is coming when a foreign scientist or scholar who does not know Russian language would risk putting himself in an awkward and pitiful position.” (David Zaslavskii).

• For the U.N., whose mandate was to prevent the apocalyptic consequences of a third world war, the past was epitomized by the League of Nations, which had failed to stabilize a world order in the aftermath of the first war. As a departure from the notoriously Eurocentric League of Nations, the United Nations, as its founding charter stated, was to be based on “the principle of the sovereign equality” of member-states. Most visibly, the principle implied the equality of communication. The League of Nations recognized two official languages—English and French—a reflection of the outcomes of World War I and British imperial aspirations. The U.N. recognized five—Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.