# So, when will we write Science papers in Chinese? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 15, 2009, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220 "2009-04-15T20:35:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![flonks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3ab097/32.png) [@flonks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flonks)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/21 "2009-04-16T18:12:16Z")
> [@Vihaga](#): > > I’d say never. Why? India. That is certainly a good point. For the moment, at least in my domain, Indian research labs and universities are almost non-existant, at least compared to Chinese institutions. At least in France we also have many agreements with China, research grants, student exchange funds etc. We do not have these with India. We have lots of Chinese grad students in our lab, I do not know a single Indian one. But I know this is different in the US where there are many Indian students. Correct me if I am wrong, but my personal impression is, that there is lots of software development coming out of India, but not so much research - apart from the Indian scientists in the US or in Europe. ---
**Author:** ![Vihaga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Vihaga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vihaga)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/22 "2009-04-16T18:17:35Z")
> [@flonks](#): > > Correct me if I am wrong, but my personal impression is, that there is lots of software development coming out of India, but not so much research - apart from the Indian scientists in the US or in Europe. I think that’s probably true (no cite), but there are a lot of Indian scientists here, at least in my field in the US. I think India’s behind on infrastructure, which is why so many of their scientists leave, but [they’re starting to work on it](http://www.scidev.net/en/news/india-to-revitalise-science-research-in-universiti.html). I think they’ll get there before China achieves the kind of global dominance that would result in changing the primary language of science to Chinese. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/23 "2009-04-16T18:20:14Z")
> [@flonks](#): > > Looking at the [table of contents of the current issue](http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/abs/trans/tp/2009/06/ttp200906toc.htm), we can see that 6 out of 12 regular papers contain at least one co-author with an Asian name (I didn’t count the Indian names as asian though) Actually, if you count Indian names, the percent is huge. Another example is [IEEE Transactions on Communications](http://www.comsoc.org/livepubs/comm/Public/2008/nov/index.html). The vast majority of authors are either Indian or non-Indian Asian. BTW, now that a lot of authors are Asian, I think Journals should put an “author ID number” next to each name associated with a particular article. The reason is that if you want to search for all the papers of, say, Lin Zhang, there are many people with that name, and you can’t know which papers are by the Lin Zhang you are interested in. The problem is not as big for Indians and Europeans, since they have longer names, and the probability of having multiple people with the same name is much lower. ---
**Author:** ![Vihaga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Vihaga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vihaga)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/24 "2009-04-16T18:23:15Z")
> [@Polerius](#): > > BTW, now that a lot of authors are Asian, I think Journals should put an “author ID number” next to each name associated with a particular article. It would be nice if they did that anyway, so you could track people through name changes. ---
**Author:** ![flonks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3ab097/32.png) [@flonks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flonks)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/25 "2009-04-16T18:25:38Z")
> [@Polerius](#): > > Actually, if you count Indian names, the percent is huge. > BTW, now that a lot of authors are Asian, I think Journals should put an “author ID number” next to each name associated with a particular article. The reason is that if you want to search for all the papers of, say, Lin Zhang, there are many people with that name, and you can’t know which papers are by the Lin Zhang you are interested in. The problem is not as big for Indians and Europeans, since they have longer names, and the probability of having multiple people with the same name is much lower. Thomson has introduced this ID, it’s called “research ID”. Thomson is the company responsible for “The web of science”, and they calculate the journal impact factors used to rank journals. > **[Create & Manage Your Academic Researcher Profile | Clarivate](https://clarivate.com/academia-government/scientific-and-academic-research/research-discovery-and-referencing/web-of-science/wos-researcher-profiles/?utm_medium=Referral&utm_source=researcherid-com)** > > Create your online researcher profile to raise your visibility in the research community and showcase your publications, citations, and peer reviews. Find out more. It’s not really used yet. I do not have a research id. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/26 "2009-04-16T18:36:44Z")
> [@flonks](#): > > Microsoft research for example has only three offices, and guess where? Seattle, Cambridge, and Beijing. > Christian > [@Wikipedia](#): > > ``` > * Microsoft Research Redmond was founded on the Microsoft Redmond campus in 1991 working in buildings 112 and 113. It currently has about 350 researchers and is headed by Rico Malvar. > * Microsoft Research Cambridge was founded in 1997 by Roger Needham and now numbers over 100 employees. It maintains close ties to the University of Cambridge. > * Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) was founded in Beijing in November 1998. Advanced Technology Center was initially a group of MSRA until it became an independent R&D group of Microsoft. > * Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, located in Mountain View, California, was founded in August 2001. In January 2006, the Silicon Valley lab merged with Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center (BARC) in San Francisco. > * Microsoft Research India was established in January 2005 in Bangalore. > * Microsoft Research New England was established in 2008 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. > > ``` .. ---
**Author:** ![flonks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3ab097/32.png) [@flonks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flonks)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/27 "2009-04-16T18:42:59Z")
Oh, sorry, I didn’t know the 3 recent ones. The one in India is interesting, I googled a couple of people… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/28 "2009-04-16T20:13:02Z")
[smartassed answer] Uh, when the Chinese respect our patents, trademarks and copyrights? [/sa] Relax, English is the global language for the foreseeable future. Membership has its privileges… ---
**Author:** ![flonks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3ab097/32.png) [@flonks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flonks)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/29 "2009-04-16T20:21:18Z")
> [@The\_Scrivener](#): > > [smartassed answer] Uh, when the Chinese respect our patents, trademarks and copyrights? [/sa] > > Relax, English is the global language for the foreseeable future. Membership has its privileges… I guess that’s what the French said for their language around 1800 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/30 "2009-04-16T22:04:54Z")
I will rue the day when I have to learn Chinese again. Scientists should all just pick the easiest language and go from there. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/31 "2009-04-16T22:31:34Z")
So **flonks** you don’t think there is some merit to the idea that a pictographic character system is inefficient for explaining logical concepts? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2009, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/32 "2009-04-16T23:32:38Z")
While there are more Mandarin speakers in the world than English speakers, there are far more people who speak English as a second language than there are people who speak Chinese as a second language. One advantage the Chinese do have is that Chinese languages other than Mandarin can be written using Chinese characters, so people can read the same document even if they can’t understand each others spoken languages. But for quite a while English is going to be the dominant accessory language, and development in India is going to reinforce that. ---
**Author:** ![flonks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3ab097/32.png) [@flonks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flonks)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/33 "2009-04-17T06:12:00Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > So **flonks** you don’t think there is some merit to the idea that a pictographic character system is inefficient for explaining logical concepts? I honestly have no idea, I do not speak any Asian language. I have a vague idea how it works, but that will not allow me to draw to conclusions. There are scientific documents written in Japanese and Chinese, I recently get them when students apply for summer jobs and they send in their papers. Often, when undergraduates apply for a position as a grad student, they send in papers they published in Chineses national conferences. At a conference in Spain I once asked a Japanase collegue to send me a longer report than the short conference paper. I received a long paper in Japanese. If it’s inefficient for logical concepts, how did the Chinese survive? Logic is not only used in science, but also in daily life, philosophy, or in business papers. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/34 "2009-04-17T18:54:14Z")
> [@](#): > > I guess that’s what the French said for their language around 1800 And in 1800, they may well have been correct. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/35 "2009-04-17T19:22:17Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > I also heard from someone who is Chinese that there is something about alphabet languages over pictographic languages that lends them to logical formats more readily. So even if Chinese became dominant science would likely still not be written in Chinese. I vaguely recall, from when I was in grad school, a fellow grad student from China saying something to the effect that English was a good language for scientific explanations (presumably, compared to Chinese). I didn’t ask for clarification at the time, but I’d be interested in learning whether and why that’s true. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/36 "2009-04-17T20:38:46Z")
> [@flonks](#): > > I guess your question is about the difficulty of Russian, not on Bobby Fisher. I read it in a [Book on languages (written in German)](http://www.amazon.de/Die-Sprachen-Welt-Geschichte-vergleichender/dp/3880598800) I took a semester of Russian in college. Unfortunately, it was my last semester, or I would have continued, but actually, learning the alphabet is the easier part. Cyrillic really isn’t all THAT difficult. (Sadly, I only remember a few token words, since, like I said, I was only able to take one semester. :() I do, however, still have a couple of books on the Russian language-including one on Russian swears. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/37 "2009-04-17T22:43:18Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > So **flonks** you don’t think there is some merit to the idea that a pictographic character system is inefficient for explaining logical concepts? Why would it be? The written language just represents the thoughts and the spoken language. Why would the Chinese language be any more inefficient in explaining logical concepts? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/38 "2009-04-17T22:46:56Z")
> [@sailor](#): > > Why would it be? The written language just represents the thoughts and the spoken language. Why would the Chinese language be any more inefficient in explaining logical concepts? Because it represents ideas metaphorically based on a visual representation. I don’t speak Chinese, so I don’t know really. That’s just what makes sense to me. Western grammatical function is sequential. ---
**Author:** ![phi2dao](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/6de8d8/32.png) [@phi2dao](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phi2dao)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/39 "2009-04-17T23:30:33Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Because it represents ideas metaphorically based on a visual representation. I don’t speak Chinese, so I don’t know really. That’s just what makes sense to me. Western grammatical function is sequential. What do you mean by sequential? Chinese grammar is just as sequential as western grammar. In fact, it could be argued that Chinese grammar is **more** sequential than western grammar. The meaning of a Chinese sentence is, with only two or three exceptions, entirely based on word order. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220/40 "2009-04-17T23:38:45Z")
> [@phi2dao](#): > > What do you mean by sequential? > Chinese grammar is just as sequential as western grammar. In fact, it could be argued that Chinese grammar is **more** sequential than western grammar. The meaning of a Chinese sentence is, with only two or three exceptions, entirely based on word order. I don’t know the answer, I have just read a discussion about Chinese being less amenable to scientific writing. I don’t understand why it is, or if it really is true. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-when-will-we-write-science-papers-in-chinese/493220.md?page=3)