Thirteen years ago, a deadly strain of avian flu known as H5N1 was tearing through Asia's bird populations. In January 2004, Chinese scientists reported that pigs too had become infected with the virus—an alarming development, since pigs are susceptible to human viruses and could potentially act as a "mixing vessel" that would allow the virus to jump to humans.
13年前，一股名為H5N1的致命禽流感在亞洲鳥(niǎo)類中肆虐流行。2004年1月，中國(guó)科學(xué)家的報(bào)告稱：豬也會(huì)感染這種病毒——這是一項(xiàng)很有警示作用的進(jìn)展，因?yàn)樨i很容易感染人類的病毒，而且可能會(huì)充當(dāng)“混合容器”，最終使病毒傳染到人類身上。

Yet at the time, little attention was paid outside of China—because the study was published only in Chinese, in a small Chinese journal of veterinary medicine. It wasn't until August of that year that the World Health Organization and the United Nations learned of the study's results and rushed to have it translated.
然而，當(dāng)時(shí)在中國(guó)以外只有很少人關(guān)注，因?yàn)檠芯繄?bào)告是用中文寫的，刊登在中國(guó)一份小型獸醫(yī)期刊上。直到當(dāng)年的8月份，世界衛(wèi)生組織和聯(lián)合國(guó)才得知報(bào)告結(jié)果，緊急請(qǐng)人翻譯。

Those scientists and policy makers ran headlong into one of science's biggest unsolved dilemmas: language. A new study in the journal PLOS Biology sheds light on how widespread the gulf can be between English-language science and any-other-language science, and how that gap can lead to situations like the avian flu case, or worse.
那些科學(xué)家和政策制定者們都一頭扎進(jìn)了科學(xué)界最難的一個(gè)未解悖論中：語(yǔ)言。PLOS Biology雜志的一項(xiàng)新研究關(guān)注了英語(yǔ)語(yǔ)言科學(xué)和其它語(yǔ)言科學(xué)之間有多大的鴻溝，以及這種鴻溝會(huì)如何導(dǎo)致出現(xiàn)像禽流感案例這樣甚至是更糟的情況。

"Native English speakers tend to assume that all important information is in English," says Tatsuya Amano, a zoology researcher at the University of Cambridge and lead author on this study. Yet particularly when it comes to work about biodiversity and conservation, Amano says, much of the most important data is collected and published by researchers in the countries where exotic or endangered species live—not just the United States or England. This can lead to oversights of important statistics or critical breakthroughs by international organizations, or even scientists unnecessarily duplicating research that has already been done.
該研究的第一作者、劍橋大學(xué)動(dòng)物學(xué)研究者天野達(dá)也說(shuō)：“以英語(yǔ)為母語(yǔ)的人傾向于假想所有的重要信息都是用英語(yǔ)來(lái)傳達(dá)的?！比欢?，特別是涉及到生物多樣性及保護(hù)的工作時(shí)，天野達(dá)也說(shuō)，收集和發(fā)表很多重要數(shù)據(jù)的研究人員都來(lái)自奇異或?yàn)l危動(dòng)物生活的國(guó)家，而非僅僅來(lái)自美國(guó)或英國(guó)。這可能導(dǎo)致國(guó)際組織忽視重要的統(tǒng)計(jì)信息或關(guān)鍵性突破，甚至?xí)尶茖W(xué)家們?nèi)プ霾槐匾摹⒁呀?jīng)做過(guò)了的重復(fù)性研究工作。

Even for people who try not to ignore research published in non-English languages, Amano says, difficulties exist. More than half of the non-English papers observed in this study had no English title, abstract or keywords, making them all but invisible to most scientists doing database searches in English.
天野還說(shuō)，即使對(duì)于那些想努力不忽視非英語(yǔ)研究成果的人來(lái)說(shuō)，也有很多困難。研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，半數(shù)以上非英語(yǔ)論文都沒(méi)有英語(yǔ)標(biāo)題、摘要或關(guān)鍵詞，導(dǎo)致大多數(shù)用英語(yǔ)進(jìn)行數(shù)據(jù)庫(kù)檢索的科學(xué)家完全找不到這些論文。

It's also worrisome that English has become so prestigious for scientists that many non-English speakers avoid publishing research in their own languages, Amano says. Federico Kukso, a MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow who has reported on science in Spanish and English for more than 15 years, says the bias extends beyond how scientists view studies; it also manifests in what science the media chooses to focus on.
天野說(shuō)，還有一點(diǎn)令人擔(dān)憂的是，英語(yǔ)在科學(xué)家們看來(lái)已經(jīng)變得非常權(quán)威，所以許多非英語(yǔ)國(guó)家的人會(huì)避免使用本國(guó)語(yǔ)言發(fā)表研究結(jié)果。費(fèi)德里科?庫(kù)克索是一位麻省理工大學(xué)奈特科學(xué)新聞學(xué)者，他已用西班牙語(yǔ)和英語(yǔ)發(fā)表科學(xué)研究逾15年，他說(shuō)語(yǔ)言偏見(jiàn)已超出科學(xué)家們?nèi)绾慰创芯康姆懂?；它還表現(xiàn)在媒體會(huì)選擇聚焦哪些科學(xué)研究上。

Amano thinks that journals and scientific academies working to include international voices is one of the best solutions to this language gap.
天野達(dá)也認(rèn)為期刊和科學(xué)研究院努力收入各國(guó)聲音才是解決語(yǔ)言鴻溝的一種最好策略。

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