I’ve written before about how sometimes I can feel a little exasperated by what seems to be a constant barrage of bad English from some of my co-authors. No, I’m not focussing solely on students, or even native English speakers for that matter. In fact, one of the best (English) science writers with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working is a Spaniard (he also happens to write particularly well in Castellano). He was also fairly high up on the command-of-English ladder when he started out as my PhD student. So. There.
In other words, just because you grew up speaking the Queen’s doesn’t automatically guarantee that you’ll bust a phrase as easily as Shakespeare, Tolkien, Gould or Flannery; in fact, it might put you at a decided disadvantage compared to your English-as-a-second- (-third-, -fourth-, -fifth- …) language peers because they avoided learning all those terrible habits you picked up as you grunted your way through adolescence. Being forced to learn the grammar of another language often tends to make you grasp that of your mother tongue a little better.
So regardless of your background, if you’ve managed to beat the odds and know in your heart that you are in fact a good writer of science in English (you know who you are), I think you have a moral duty to help out those who still struggle with it. I’m not referring necessarily to the inevitable corrections you’ll make to your co-authors’ prose when drafting manuscripts1. I am instead talking about going out of your way to help someone who really, really needs it.
It’s not easy to be altruistic in this way. Hell, I’m not innately charitable myself, and I remember being fairly focussed on yours truly during the worst of the uphill academic climb. I didn’t have time to worry about a budding scientist in China, Indonesia, Brazil, or wherever who was as confused as a spider on cocaine when it came to mastering the peculiarities of the English language. Many years later I realise that I should have made the time.
I admit that sometimes I am a slow learner. In my case the opportunity to assist wasn’t something I sought actively; rather, it was more or less forced on me. In one of my now-regular visits to China a few years back, I was politely requested to assist with some student projects after having been wined and dined (and flown and lodged) by my generous Chinese hosts. After the official symposium wrapped up, I was placed in a small, windowless classroom, plunked down next to a smiling young person, and told to ‘help’. Collaboration doesn’t get much more contrived than that.
So I did my duty with some inner grumbling, and tried to listen to what the student was attempting to communicate through that difficult Chinese-to-English translation barrier. It wasn’t easy, but after about an hour I was struck by how (a) amazing the dataset was, (b) meticulous and dedicated the student was, and (c) how this was going to be a lot more fascinating than I had originally expected. Of course, I wasn’t just there to tweak his sentence structure – I have a few other scientific skills up my sleeve too. That said, it was probably the deep need for good English communication that got it all started.
Long story shortened – several years and papers later, I have a rich and mutually beneficial collaboration with some wonderful Chinese colleagues with whom I would never have conceived of working prior to that awkward classroom experience. Not only do I consider them good friends, I have been introduced to an entire field of ecology that wasn’t on my radar beforehand. The experience has opened so many doors for me that I’ve lost track of the count. In essence, it was a fantastic opportunity.
To move away for the moment from the selfish aspects of this collaboration, I believe another and infinitely more important benefit of such collaborations is that if they do not happen, the scientific results don’t tend to end up seeing the light of publication day quite as easily. How often do we lament that there is insufficient science coming out of country x, y or z? If we only knew what treasures we could prevent from being consigned to the dungeons of the scientific lingua franca, our disciplines could be so much richer for it.
If I can thus be so bold as to offer some advice after having stumbled quite inadvertently across this little truth, it would be that you should seek such opportunities with fervour. The next time you meet a struggling non-native English speaker at a conference, workshop or other scientific meeting place, maybe think about getting involved officially. Both of you will thankful for it in the end, and your peers will rejoice in their ability to access your results.
CJA Bradshaw
1And of course, you should be following our suggested plan on how to write a scientific paper.
