Babel
In Our Contemporary World, It Seems Axiomatic That The Language Of Science Is English. Whether You Are A Researcher In Tokyo, A Scientist In Paris, Or A Student In Cairo, The Path To Academic Publishing And International Recognition Inevitably Passes Through The Gateway Of Latin Letters And English Grammar. But, Has It Always Been This Way? And Is This One-Sided Fate The Natural Evolution Of Human Civilization? In His Stunning And Profound Book “Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before And After Global English”, Historian Michael D. Gordin Takes Us On A Flowing Narrative Journey Through History, To Dismantle This Axiom, And Prove To Us That The Descent Into Monolingualism Is, Historically Speaking, A Very Strange And Anomalous Result, Given That Most Of Humanity Has Been, Throughout Most Periods Of Its Existence, Multilingual To One Degree Or Another.
Gordin Presents His Thesis, Considering That Scientific Communication Always Carries A Hidden Tension Between Two Main Motives: The First Is “Identity”, Where The Scientist Seeks To Express His Ideas In The Most Accurate Form Possible, Which Is Usually Achieved By Using His Mother Tongue; And The Second Is “Communication”, That Is, The Desire To Convey These Ideas To Others And Convince Them Of Them, Which Requires The Use Of A Common Or Widely Spoken Language. This Historical Tension Is The Engine That Shaped The Rise And Fall Of Scientific Languages Throughout The Ages, Which The Author Brilliantly Highlights Through Vivid Historical Examples That Make The Reader Live The Suffering Of Scientists In Times When The “Babel” Of Languages Was An Inevitable Reality.
Perhaps One Of The Most Prominent Stories That Gordin Cites To Support His Idea Is The One That Took Place During The “Chemical Revolution” In The Late Eighteenth Century, Between The French Chemist Antoine Lavoisier And The British Joseph Priestley. At That Time, The French Language Promoted Itself As A Universal Language Of Knowledge And Thought, Just As English Does Today. Lavoisier, As A Native Speaker Of This “Universal” Language, Saw No Need To Learn English, Relying On The Active Translation Movement To Know What His British Counterparts Were Discovering. In Contrast, English And Irish Scientists, Such As Richard Kirwan, Faced Enormous Linguistic Friction, As They Had To Deal With The Dominance Of Another Language To Promote Their Counter-Theories, Forcing Lavoisier’s Wife To Learn English Specifically To Translate And Refute Kirwan’s Works. This Story, As Presented In The Book, Highlights “Linguistic Friction” As A Pivotal Factor Affecting The Speed Of Scientific Information Exchange And Even The Course Of Academic Superiority, And Reveals How The Choice Of Publication Language Grants Native Speakers A Hidden Privilege That Exempts Them From The Heavy Burden Of Translation.
The Perfect Past That Almost Was: The Rise And Fall Of Latin
The Author Dives Deeper Into History To Dismantle Another Myth: The Myth Of Latin As The Eternal Universal Language Of Science. In The First Chapter, Gordin Explains That Latin Was Not Born A Scientific Language, But Was Carved Out With Extreme Difficulty. In Ancient Rome, Greek Was The Undisputed Language Of Natural Philosophy And Scientific Thinking. Even Roman Thinkers Like Cicero Had To Fight Real Battles, Adapt Latin Grammar, And Invent Entirely New Vocabulary, Such As The Term “Quantity”, So That They Could Absorb And Transfer Greek Science To Their Compatriots.
What Is Surprising, As The Narrative Suggests, Is That Latin Was Absent From The Scientific Scene For Long Centuries In The Middle Ages, Where The Arabic Language Dominated As A Universal Language For Sciences, Carrying The Banner Of Philosophy, Medicine, Astronomy, And Mathematics. Latin Did Not Regain Its Glory And Become The Unified European Language Of Science Until The Twelfth Century, Through A Large-Scale Translation Movement From The Arabic Language In Cities Like Toledo, Where Arabic And Greek Technical Terms Were Integrated Into The Body Of The Latin Language, Which Led To Changing Its Structure To Suit The Requirements Of Precise Scientific Thinking.
But This Golden Age Of Latin As A Unified Scientific “Language Of Communication” Did Not Last Long. With The Dawn Of The Modern Era, Scientists Began To Feel An Increasing Desire To Address Local Audiences And Patrons Of Science In Their Countries, Preferring “Identity” And Local Communication Over Universal Discourse. Here, Local Languages Emerged Such As Italian (With Galileo), English (With Newton In His Book Opticks), German, And French To Compete With Latin. Gordin Gives A Vivid Example From The Eighteenth Century Through The Correspondence Of The Swedish Chemist Torbern Bergman, Who Received Scientific Letters In Swedish, Danish, French, English, German, And Latin. Bergman Lived At The Peak Of The “Scientific Babel”, Where Latin Transformed From An Exclusive Universal Language To Just One Language Among A Group Of Competing Languages, Paving The Way For Its Final Collapse In The Nineteenth Century, Leaving The Arena To A Dominant Linguistic Triad: English, French, And German.
The Table And The Word: The Russian-German Battle To Penetrate The Triad
The Second Chapter Takes Us To The Mid-Nineteenth Century, Where Things Had Almost Settled In Favor Of The Linguistic “Triad” (English, French, And German). Here Gordin Asks A Fundamental Question: How Can Any Other Language Penetrate This Closed Club? The Answer Came From The East, Specifically From The Russian Empire, Through One Of The Fiercest And Most Important Scientific Battles In History: The Dispute Over The Priority Of Discovering The Periodic Table Of Chemical Elements.
In 1869, The Young Russian Chemist Dmitrii Mendeleev Reached A Periodic System For Arranging Elements. But He Realized That Publishing His Discovery In Russian Only Would Mean Burying It In The Graveyard Of International Ignorance, For Europeans Did Not Read Russian. Therefore, He Sent A Short Summary In German To Be Published In A Journal There. The Major Problem Occurred When The Translator, Out Of Haste, Translated The Russian Word Meaning “Periodic” Into The German Word Stufenweise, Which Means “Gradual” Or “In Stages”.
The German Chemist Lothar Meyer, Who Was Working On A Similar System, Seized This Published Summary, And Based On This Mistranslation, Published A Paper In Which He Claimed That He Was The One Who Discovered The “Periodic” Nature Of The Elements, Considering That Mendeleev Only Discovered The Gradation. A Fierce National And Scientific Dispute Exploded That Lasted For A Decade. Mendeleev Demanded That Europeans Return To His Original Research Published In Russian To Prove His Right, But Meyer Responded By Denouncing The Idea That German Chemists Should Be Asked To Read Research Published In Slavic Languages, Considering That Publishing In A Language Outside The “Triad” Was Not To Be Relied Upon.
This Battle Was Not Just A Dispute Over A Scientific Discovery, But Was, As Gordin Shows In His Deep Analytical Style, A Battle To Legitimize The Russian Language As An International Scientific Language. The Russians Realized That They Had To Impose Their Language On The Scientific World, Which Required Tremendous Efforts To Develop And Modernize The Russian Scientific Lexicon To Be Able To Absorb Modern Sciences, Which Is A Complex And Long Journey Of Transfer, Translation, And Restructuring Of The Slavic National Identity In The Face Of German And French Dominance.
Building The Language: Hydrogen Oxygenovich And Adapting Russian For Science
We Continue Our Journey Through The Pages Of This Enjoyable Historical Tome, To Enter The Third Chapter Which Bears A Funny And Intriguing Title: “Hydrogen Oxygenovich”. In This Section, Michael D. Gordin Dives Into The Depths Of The Suffering That Russian Scientists Faced To Transform Their Language From A Literary And Popular Language Into A Pliable Tool Capable Of Absorbing Scientific Complexities. Russian Was Considered An Extremely Difficult Language For Western Scientists, Not Only Because Of Its Cyrillic Alphabet Which Seems Strange To The Eye Accustomed To Latin Letters, But Also Because Of Its Complex Grammatical Structure That Relies On Noun Declensions According To Six Different Grammatical Cases And Three Genders, Making Word Order In A Sentence Highly Flexible But Confusing For Any Researcher Trying To Accurately Understand The Sequence Of Chemical Reactions. Gordin Explains That Scientific Languages Are Not Born Ready, But Are Built And Manufactured With Conscious And Intensive Effort, And This Is Exactly What Happened With The Russian Language Which Had Been Mired For Centuries In The Isolation Of Old Church Slavonic.
The Real Turning Point Began During The Reign Of Tsar Peter The Great, Who Sparked The “Polytechnic Transformation Of The Language” By Sponsoring A Massive Translation Movement Of Foreign Texts To Train The Russian Elite, Forcing Translators To Abandon Complex Church Slavonic Terms And Use Everyday Spoken Language. Despite This Effort, The Imperial Academy Of Sciences In St. Petersburg, Founded By Peter The Great In 1724, Continued To Use Latin And German As Official Languages For Publication And Debate, Creating A Huge Gap Between Academics Of German Origin And Russian Students Who Had To Learn German First In Order To Be Able To Study Latin. Russian Did Not Begin To Take Its Modern Form Until The Mid-Eighteenth Century, Driven By The Efforts Of Brilliant Figures Like Mikhail Lomonosov, Who Contributed To Reforming The Vocabulary And Even The Russian Sentence Structure To Resemble Western European Languages.
However, Russian Scientists In The Nineteenth Century Remained Captives Of The German Language As An International, And Even Internal, Scientific Communication Language. The Book Provides Examples Of Russian Scientists Who Corresponded With Each Other In German To Save Time And Effort, Such As The Chemist Karl Klaus Who Preferred To Correspond With His Colleague Aleksandr Butlerov In German Even Though They Both Lived In The Russian Empire. Furthermore, Russian Scientists, When Traveling Abroad, Relied On German As A Language Of Communication With Their Colleagues From Other Slavs, Such As Czechs And Poles. Great Russian Scientists, Like Dmitrii Mendeleev, Suffered From Their Weakness In Speaking And Writing Foreign Languages, Which Made Them Rely On Translators Or Endure The Hardship Of Writing Letters In Poor And Broken German To Convey Their Ideas To Their Colleagues In Western Europe.
But The Biggest Challenge Lay In Inventing Purely Russian Chemical Terminology. Gordin Tells The Story Of A Strange Proposal Submitted In 1870 By A Chemist Named Liasovskii, Who Proposed Using The Russian Family Naming System (Which Relies On The Father’s Name) To Name Chemical Compounds, So That Potassium Chloride, For Example, Would Be Called “Potassium Chlorovich”, Which Is Equivalent In Our Language To Saying “Hydrogen Oxygenovich”. This Proposal Fell Into Oblivion Because, Despite Being Compatible With The Spirit Of The Russian Language, It Would Have Made Translation Into European Languages Impossible. In The End, The Russians Realized That Linguistic Localization Must Align With International Standards, And The Real Victory For The Scientific Russian Language Came Through A Reverse Process Of The Translation Flow. Instead Of Translating Western Textbooks Into Russian, The Chemist Aleksandr Butlerov In The 1860s Published His Reference Book “Introduction To The Complete Study Of Organic Chemistry” In Russian First, And Then It Was Later Translated Into German. This Historical Event, As Described By The Book, Was Like An Official Declaration Of The Russian Language’s Ability To Produce And Export Science, Dispelling A Decade Of Linguistic Dependence On The West.
Speaking In The Language Of Utopia: Escaping Babel Towards Artificial Languages
As The End Of The Nineteenth Century Approached, And With Russian Entering As A New Player In The Scientific Arena, The Fragile Balance Of The “Linguistic Triad” (English, French, And German) Began To Shake. The Fourth Chapter, Titled “Speaking In The Language Of Utopia”, Reviews A State Of Panic That Swept European Academic Circles For Fear Of The Return Of A New Linguistic “Babel” That Would Make It Impossible For Any Scientist To Encompass All Published Research. The Rise Of Nationalist Movements Led To The Desire Of Every Nation, No Matter How Small, To Publish Its Sciences In Its Local Language Independent Of Its Powerful Neighbors. Since Living Languages Were Saturated With Nationalist Sensibilities And Illogical Grammatical Complexities, And Since Latin Was Considered A Dead, Difficult Language Full Of Exceptions That Obstruct Modern Science, Eyes Turned Towards A Bold Utopian Solution: Inventing A Universal And Artificial Auxiliary Language.
Gordin Takes Us On A Fascinating Tour To Explore Humanity’s Attempts To Invent A Universal Language, Starting With “Volapük”, Invented By The Catholic Priest Johann Martin Schleyer In 1879 After Claiming That Inspiration Came To Him In A Dream. Volapük Was Based On European Linguistic Roots That Were Heavily Modified To Fit Strict Rules Devoid Of Exceptions, And It Achieved Resounding Success In The 1880s, As Its Clubs Spread All Over The World, From China To The United States, And Even Major Parisian Department Stores Began Offering Classes To Teach It. Despite Its Success In Holding International Conferences Where Participants Spoke Exclusively In This Language, Its Collapse Was Swift And Tragic Due To The Stubbornness Of Its Inventor Schleyer And His Refusal Of Any Reforms That Would Simplify Its Complexities, Which Led To The Splintering Of Its Followers And Its Demise As A Global Movement.
On The Ruins Of Volapük, The Star Of “Esperanto” Dawned, Invented By The Jewish Ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof In Warsaw, Who Published Its First Book In 1887. Esperanto Was Distinguished By Its Extreme Simplicity And Its Sixteen Grammatical Rules That Accepted No Exceptions, And Its Reliance On Familiar Linguistic Roots For Speakers Of Romance And Germanic Languages. To Avoid The Fate Of Splintering That Destroyed Volapük, Zamenhof And His Followers Issued The “Declaration Of Boulogne” In 1905, Which Made The Basic Rules Of The Language (The Fundamento) A Sacred Doctrine That Was Untouchable Or Unalterable. Despite The Spread Of Esperanto In Cultural And Literary Circles, Its Penetration Into Scientific Circles Was Slow, And It Collided With Technical Problems When Trying To Translate Chemical Terminology, As Its Pioneers Disagreed On How To Harmonize International Scientific Nomenclatures With The Strict Rules Of Esperanto, Such As The Disagreement Over The Naming Of Mercury, Which Revealed A Shortcoming In The Language’s Flexibility To Keep Pace With Rapid Scientific Development.
The Magicians Of Ido: The Great Schism And The Mirage Of The Ideal Scientific Language
In The Midst Of This Turbulent Linguistic Scene, A New Hero Appears On Stage In The Fifth Chapter: The Nobel Prize-Winning German Chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. Ostwald Was A Believer In The Philosophy Of “Energetics”, And He Believed That The Multiplicity Of Languages Represented A Massive And Gratuitous Waste Of Human Energy, Just As Is The Case With The Lack Of Standardization Of Railway Gauges Or Currencies. Therefore, Ostwald Threw His Academic Weight, And Gave Up His University Position, To Devote Himself To Supporting The “Delegation For The Adoption Of An International Auxiliary Language” Project Founded In Paris.
Gordin Narrates In A Dramatic Style The Events Of The 1907 Paris Conference, Where A Committee Of Senior Scientists And Linguists Met To Choose A Universal Auxiliary Language. In A Surprising Moment, Copies Of A Project For A New Language Bearing The Pseudonym “Ido” Were Distributed To The Committee Members. Ido Appeared To Be An Improved And Revised Version Of Esperanto, As It Got Rid Of Letters With Strange Diacritics, Abolished The Compulsory Adjective-Noun Agreement Rule, And Adopted Strict Principles For Logical Consistency Between Words. Ido Was Based On Three Main Scientific Principles: Univocality (One Word For Each Meaning), Universality (Choosing The Most Widespread Linguistic Roots Among Civilized Peoples), And Logical Reversibility In Word Derivation.
Ostwald And The Committee Were Impressed By The Ido Language And Decided To Adopt Esperanto On The Condition That Ido’s Modifications Were Introduced To It. But The Esperanto Community Refused To Touch The Sacred “Fundamento”, Which Led To A Devastating Schism In The Universal Languages Movement. The Bitterness Of The Schism Increased When It Was Later Discovered That The Anonymous Author Of Ido Was None Other Than Louis De Beaufront, Zamenhof’s Personal Representative Before The Committee And One Of The Most Important Pillars Of Esperanto In France, Which The Esperantists Considered High Treason And A Stab In The Back.
Despite This Bitter Conflict, Ostwald And His Companions, Supported By The Nobel Prize Money That Ostwald Donated To The Movement, Devoted Themselves To Promoting Ido As A Purely Scientific Language Free From Emotions And Nationalist Inclinations. Ostwald Made A Tireless Effort To Translate Inorganic Chemical Nomenclature Into Ido, Trying To Reconcile International Symbols With The Strict Linguistic Logic Of The New Language. But This Scientific Utopia Did Not Last Long. Due To The Absence Of A Sacred Book To Protect It From Modification, The Supporters Of Ido Drowned In A Whirlpool Of Continuous Reforms That Made The Language Lose The Stability Necessary To Attract A Wide Audience. Then Came The Fatal Blow With The Outbreak Of The First World War In 1914, And The Death Of Louis Couturat (One Of The Most Important Theoreticians Of Ido) In A Traffic Accident With A French Military Car, Shattering The Dream Of Uniting Humanity Scientifically Through An Artificial Language, Leaving The Arena To Return Once Again To The Struggle Of Natural Languages And Warring Nationalisms.
The Shadow Of The Great War: Blind Nationalism And The Fall Of German Into The Boycott Trap
With The Outbreak Of The First World War, The Dreams Of The Linguistic Utopians Dissipated Under The Weight Of Cannons, And The Ugly Face Of Conflicting Nationalisms Was Revealed. In The Sixth Chapter, Titled “The Linguistic Shadow Of The Great War”, Michael D. Gordin Narrates How The Chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, Who Until Recently Had Been The Godfather Of The Neutral “Ido” Language, Abandoned His Internationalist Principles As Soon As The German Armies Began Marching, To Propose A New Linguistic Project He Called “Weltdeutsch”, Or World German. This Project Aimed To Simplify The German Language To Be The Language Of Administration And Hegemony In The Conquered Territories, Considering That The Triumph Of Arms Must Be Followed By A Linguistic Triumph. This Shift Shocked His Old Comrades In The Ido Movement With Horrific Dismay, As They Saw In This Stance A Betrayal Of The Values Of Scientific Neutrality, But Ostwald Insisted That Simplified German Was What Would Rule The World.
The German Language Was Not In An Enviable Position In Terms Of International Acceptance Even Before The War. The Book Conveys Scathing Criticisms, Such As Those Directed By The French Linguist Antoine Meillet, Who Described German As A Harsh Language, Full Of Archaic Rules And Complex Noun Declensions, And Its Vocabulary Was Strange Even To Its European Neighbors. This Tension Was Manifested In The Famous Dispute Between The French Chemist Charles Adolphe Wurtz And His German Counterpart Hermann Kolbe, When Wurtz Boldly Declared That Chemistry Was A “French Science” Founded By Lavoisier, Igniting A Verbal And Nationalist War That Reflected The Escalating Tension Between France And Prussia.
But The Fatal Blow To German’s International Status Came With The Publication Of The “Manifesto Of The Ninety-Three” At The Beginning Of The War, Which Was Signed By The Elite Of German Scientists And Intellectuals, Including Ostwald, Max Planck, And Fritz Haber, Defending German Military Operations In Belgium And Emphasizing The Cohesion Of German Culture With Militarism. To Make Matters Worse, German Scientists, Led By Haber, Were Involved In Developing And Using Chemical Weapons Like Chlorine Gas. In Response, And Following The End Of The War, Scientists In The Allied Countries Decided To Punish Germany With A Comprehensive Scientific Boycott. The “International Research Council” (IRC) Was Established In Brussels, And German Scientists Were Excluded From International Conferences And Scientific Organizations, Such As The International Union Of Pure And Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), Which Banned The Use Of The German Language In Its Halls. This Boycott Led To A Sharp Decline In Foreign Participation In German Journals, Making The Language Lose Its Appeal As A Global Communication Tool.
The Repercussions Were Not Limited To Europe, But Extended To The Other Side Of The Atlantic Ocean, Where The German Language Faced A Fierce Eradication Campaign In The United States. Before The War, German Was The Most Popular Foreign Language In American Schools And Universities. But With America’s Entry Into The War, Speaking Or Teaching It Was Criminalized In Many States, And Some Of Its Speakers Were Even Subjected To Bloody Attacks. Although The US Supreme Court Later Overturned These Laws In The Famous “Meyer v. Nebraska” Case, The Damage Had Already Been Done, And The Numbers Of Students Studying German Collapsed Irreparably, Paving The Way Later For The Withdrawal Of New Generations Of American Scientists Into The Shell Of Monolingual English.
Unspeakable: The Language Of The Third Reich And The Tearing Of The Bonds Of Science
The Seventh Chapter, “Unspeakable”, Takes Us To The Darkest Era In The History Of Modern Science: The Rise Of Nazi Germany In The 1930s. The Nazi Impact On The Language Of Science Was Not Limited To A Decline In Publication Rates, But Extended To Touch The Souls Of Scientists, Their Lifestyles, And Their Way Of Thinking. As Soon As Hitler Came To Power, The “Law For The Restoration Of The Professional Civil Service” Was Passed In April 1933, Which Led To The Dismissal Of A Quarter Of Physics Scientists And The Destruction Of Entire Departments In Prestigious Universities Like Göttingen. This Ethnic And Political Purge Led To The Migration Of Brilliant Minds, Like Albert Einstein, Max Born, And Lise Meitner, To The United States And Britain, Which Led To The Tearing Of International Academic Cooperation Networks That Used To Make Germany The Preferred Destination For Young Researchers.
In Parallel With This Human Purge, The Nazi Regime Launched A Campaign To Purge The Language Itself, Taking The Concept Of The “Mother Tongue” (Muttersprache) As A Crude Ideological Tool To Exclude Jews, Claiming That They Possessed No Spiritual And Ethnic Connection To The German Language And That They Used It Merely As A Communication Tool. Gordin Quotes The Observations Of The Jewish Philologist Victor Klemperer, Who Documented In His Diaries How The Language Of The “Third Reich” (LTI) Poisoned The Minds Of Germans, By Inflating The Use Of Violent Verbs And Compound Nouns That Pounded Like Hammers, Making Individuals Unconsciously Accept Concepts Like Fanaticism And Brutality As Heroic Virtues. This Ideological Obsession Extended To Pure Sciences Through The “Aryan Physics” (Deutsche Physik) Movement Led By Philipp Lenard And Johannes Stark, Who Tried To Exclude Abstract Theories Like Einstein’s Relativity And Quantum Mechanics, And Promote A “German” Physics Science Based On Direct Intuitive Experience And Written In A German Language Free Of “Jewish” Mathematical Complexities.
Here Gordin Highlights The Tragic Human Dimension Of Losing A Language, Explaining How Immigrant Scientists Dealt With Their Linguistic Alienation. For Thinkers Like Hannah Arendt And Theodor Adorno, Returning To German After The War Or Clinging To It In Exile Was An Act Of Resistance And Clinging To A Cultural Identity Deeper Than The Crimes Of Nazism. In Contrast, Albert Einstein Embodied The Stance Of Categorical And Principled Rejection Of Any Dealings With The German Language Or Institutions After The Holocaust, Considering That Publishing In German Journals Was A Kind Of Betrayal. As For The Physicist Lise Meitner, Who Fled To Sweden And Faced Extreme Difficulty Learning Swedish Or English, She Used Her Linguistic Alienation As A Powerful Metaphor To Explain The Magnitude Of The Suffering She Endured To Her Colleagues Who Remained In Germany And Did Not Grasp The Enormity Of Hitler’s Crimes, Describing Exile As A Forced Deprivation Of Both Intellectual And Linguistic Homeland Together.
Dostoevsky’s Machine: The Cold War And The Obsession With Machine Translation
With The Lowering Of The Curtain On The Second World War, The World Was Divided Into Two Camps Competing Not Only With Nuclear Missiles, But With Scientific Production. The Eighth Chapter, “Dostoevsky’s Machine”, Transports Us To New York On The Seventh Of January 1954, Where The Press Gathered At IBM Headquarters To Witness An Event That Resembled Magic: A Massive 701 Computer Translating Russian Scientific Sentences Into English With Amazing Smoothness. This Demonstration, Engineered By Linguist Léon Dostert, Was A Starting Point For A Frantic Race Towards Machine Translation To Decipher Soviet Scientific Research.
The Primary Driver For This Obsession Was The American Terror Of Soviet Superiority. By The 1950s, The Russian Language Constituted A Terrifying Percentage Of The Volume Of Global Scientific Publications, Surpassing German And French Combined In Some Fields Like Chemistry, While The Number Of American Scientists Able To Read Russian Did Not Exceed A Few Tenths Of One Percent. In This Context, Warren Weaver’s Famous 1949 Memorandum Appeared, In Which He Proposed Treating The Russian Language As If It Were Merely A “Hidden Code” For The English Language That Could Be Deciphered Using The Computers Used To Break Military Codes During The War.
To Facilitate This Task, American Scientists And Linguists Resorted To Taming The Russian Language By Inventing A New Concept They Called “Scientific Russian”. They Argued That The Language Of Scientific Articles Featured A Simpler Grammatical Structure, Relied On The Passive Voice, Ignored Many Complex Pronouns, And Contained Familiar International Vocabulary, Making It Free Of The Literary Complexities That Abound In The Novels Of Dostoevsky And Tolstoy. Based On These Simplistic Assumptions, American Military And Intelligence Agencies, Such As The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) And The Navy, Pumped Millions Of Dollars To Fund The Research Of Dostert And Other Researchers, Hoping To Break The Soviet Language Barrier With The Push Of A Button. Thus, Machine Translation At The Height Of The Cold War Turned Into A Strategic Weapon Parallel To Space Programs, With Everyone Believing That Understanding The Opponent’s Language Was The First Step To Surpassing Him.
The Bridge Of Comprehensive Translation And The Failure Of Linguistic Automation At The Height Of The Cold War
And With The Retreat Of The Linguistic Illusions That Accompanied The Early Beginnings Of Machine Translation, Academic And Intelligence Circles In The United States Of America Realized That Reducing Languages To Mere Simple Mathematical Codes Was A Fatal Mistake That Cost A Lot Of Time And Money. In The Ninth Chapter Titled “All The Russian That’s Fit To Print”, Michael D. Gordin Reveals How That Glamorous Reputation Gained By The Famous Georgetown Project Dissipated. It Later Became Clear That The Carefully Selected Sentences In The 1954 Public Demonstration Did Not Accurately Reflect The Structural Inability Of Computers To Grasp The Metaphors And Syntactic Complexities Of Actual Scientific Texts, Which Was Confirmed By The Shocking Report Issued By The “Automatic Languages Processing Advisory Committee”, Known For Short As The ALPAC Committee. This Report Decisively Clarified That Machine Translation At That Time Was Nothing But A Waste Of Resources, And That The Sentences Produced By Machines Were Characterized By Poor Quality And Ambiguity Compared To Human Translation, Which Led To Cutting Military Funding From Those Projects And Returning To Full Reliance On The Human Element To Solve The Linguistic Dilemma.
Faced With This Technical Impasse, And Under The Weight Of The Cognitive Shock Caused By The Soviets’ Launch Of The “Sputnik” Satellite, American Scientific Institutions Found Themselves Forced To Invent An Alternative Strategy Called “Cover-To-Cover Translation”. The “American Institute Of Physics”, With Generous Financial Support From The “National Science Foundation”, Undertook The Mobilization Of An Army Of Highly Qualified Human Translators To Translate Leading Soviet Scientific Journals Entirely, And Not Just Their Summaries Or Selected Articles From Them. Surveys Distributed To Hundreds Of American Physicists Showed Overwhelming Support For This Step, As The Vast Majority Preferred Obtaining Fully Translated Russian Journals To Avoid Any Bias In Selection Or Omission Of Data That Might Be Vital. Despite The Exorbitant Financial Cost And The Complex Structural Difficulties That Appeared When Transferring Organic Chemical Terminology And Standardizing Nomenclatures, This Massive Human Network Succeeded In Establishing A Stable Cognitive Bridge Over The Linguistic Gap Of The Cold War, Allowing Western Scientists To Follow Eastern Achievements Without Having To Incur The Trouble Of Learning The Cyrillic Alphabet.
In Contrast, The Soviet Approach To Dealing With This Linguistic Barrier Was More Comprehensive And Institutionalized, Driven By An Acute Awareness That English Had Become The Language Of A Large Segment Of Global Scientific Production. The Soviet Union Established The All-Union Institute For Scientific And Technical Information, Known By The Acronym VINITI, Which Represented The Largest Bureaucratic Machine For Summarizing, Indexing, And Translating Global Scientific Literature In Modern History. The Soviets Did Not Settle For Translating Specific Periodicals, But Conducted A Comprehensive Scan Of Everything Published In The World, And Rewrote It Into Accurate Summaries Made Available To Researchers In All Corners Of The Soviet Empire In The Russian Language. This Structural Discrepancy Reflects The Essence Of The Competition In That Era; While America Treated Russian As A Temporary Emergency Requiring Fragmented Defensive Solutions, The Soviet Union Saw In Controlling The Global Information Flow An Integral Part Of Centralized Scientific Planning, Which Maintained Russian’s Status As A Major Scientific Language Capable Of Absorbing Global Sciences Within Its Own Linguistic System.
The Cracking Of The Iron Curtain And The Accelerated Decline Of The German Language
The Author Transports Us In The Tenth Chapter, Which Bears An Eloquent Metaphorical Title “The Fe Curtain”, To The Study Of The Final Fall Of The German Language From The Throne Of International Scientific Communication, A Fall That Was Not Caused By A Decline In Research Quality As Much As It Was A Direct Reflection Of The Geopolitical Tearing That Afflicted The German Nation After The Second World War. The Division Of Germany Into Two States, East And West, Led To The Fragmentation Of The Intellectual Nerve Center That Fed German Linguistic Hegemony. In East Germany, Specifically At The Venerable “Humboldt University” In Berlin, Communist Authorities Imposed A Dual Linguistic Context; As Researchers And Students Were Forced To Study The Russian Language Intensively To Connect Academic Institutions With The Soviet Center In Moscow, In Parallel With Their Continuous Need To Follow Western Literature Written In English. Internal Surveys Conducted During That Period Showed That The East German Professor Began To Live In A Complex Linguistic Identity Dilemma, Where The Vital Need For Both English And Russian Was Equal In Disciplines Like Physics And Mathematics, Leading To The Erosion Of The Status Of The German Language As A Primary Teaching And Research Language Even Within The Walls Of Its Historical Strongholds.
On The Western Side, The Leading “Max Planck Society” Faced A Crisis Of Another Kind Represented In The Severe Brain Drain And Mass Migration Of Scientists Towards The United States Of America. The Society’s Shocking Internal Statistics Indicate That Between 1957 And 1964, Nearly A Thousand German Researchers In Natural Sciences And Engineering Migrated To America, Driven By Massive Funding Capabilities And Advanced Laboratories There. This Mass Exodus Not Only Deprived German Institutions Of Their Creative Elites, But Forced The Remaining Scientists To Adopt The English Language As The Sole Means Of Communication With Their Immigrant Colleagues And International Donors. Despite The Desperate Attempts Made By The Society To Re-Attract Immigrant Competencies And Provide Rewarding Economic Incentives, The Inevitable Result Was The Absence Of The Primary Catalyst That Previously Drove Foreign Scientists To Learn German, Which Is The Desire To Access Exclusive Knowledge; As Distinguished German Research Began To Be Published Directly In English To Ensure Its Global Readability, Making The German Language Voluntarily Withdraw To The Narrow Local And Regional Scope And Finally Relinquish Its Status As A Global Scientific Language.
The Era Of Anglophonia And The Institutional Surrender Of National Journals
The Book Crowns Its Historical Analysis In The Eleventh Chapter Titled “Anglophonia”, Where Gordin Reviews The Comprehensive Structural Transformation Witnessed In The Last Decades Of The Twentieth Century, Which Was Represented In The Transition From Restricted Multilingualism To Absolute Monolingualism In Favor Of Global English. This Transformation Was Not The Result Of A Cultural Conspiracy, But Was Driven By Capitalist Market Mechanisms And The Globalization Of Academic Publishing, And The Emergence Of Scientific Impact Indicators And Citation Factors Governing The Promotions Of Scientists And The Status Of Universities. The Author Documented How Venerable European Scientific Journals, Which Had Long Represented Citadels Of National And Linguistic Identities, Were Forced To Bow Before The Storm And Change Their Publication Language Entirely To English, And Even Change Their Historical Names To Erase Any Trace Of Their National Origins. For Example, The Journal “Die Heidelberger Beiträge Zur Mineralogie Und Petrographie”, Founded In 1947, Changed To The Entirely English Name “Contributions To Mineralogy And Petrology” In 1966. This Example Was Not Isolated, But Was Repeated With Famous Austrian, German, And French Periodicals Like “Zeitschrift Für Tierpsychologie” Which Gradually Abandoned German To Fully Adopt The English Language.
This Radical Shift Created A Kind Of Unequal Linguistic Privilege In The Contemporary Scientific Community; As Researchers Whose Native Language Is Not English Found Themselves Forced To Pay What Might Be Called A “Linguistic Tax”. Scientists In Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, And Cairo Are Forced To Spend A Large Portion Of Their Precious Time And Intellectual Effort Refining Their English Phrasings And Bearing The High Financial Costs Of Language Editors So That Their Research Is Accepted In Ranked Periodicals, While The English-Speaking Researcher Enjoys A Comfortable Privilege That Allows Him To Focus Completely On Scientific Innovation Without Syntactic Obstacles. This Structural Disparity Made English A Flexible And Global Communication Language On One Hand, But On The Other Hand, It Transformed Into A Hidden Tool Of Exclusion That Places Invisible Barriers Before Scientific Competencies That Do Not Master The Nuances Of Anglo-American Academic Grammar And Phrasing.
The Journey’s End: Babel Beyond And The Cosmic Search For Universality
And In The Conclusion Of The Exceptional Book, Which Bears The Title “Babel Beyond”, Michael D. Gordin Places Us Before Deep Philosophical And Historical Contemplations About The Outcomes Of This Monolingual Situation. The Author Acknowledges That The Existence Of A Single Shared Vehicular Language Provides Clear Efficiency And Enormous Advantages In Terms Of The Speed Of Information Exchange And The Coordination Of Transcontinental Research Efforts, Which Accelerates The Pace Of Scientific Discoveries. However, This Efficiency Comes At The Expense Of A Heavy Loss In Intellectual Diversity; For Languages Are Not Merely Neutral Receptacles For Ideas, But Are Tools For Phrasing And Shaping The Way Of Thinking Itself, And Completely Dispensing With Multilingualism May Deprive Science Of Methodological Comparisons And Creative Visions That Arise Specifically From The Unique Characteristics Of Each Language. In This Context, The Author Addresses Modern Systems Like “Google Translate”, Noting That They Have Become Excellent Tools For Quick Scanning And General Reading, But They Remain Completely Unable To Compensate For The Deep Structural Comprehension And The Absolute Creative Interaction Required By Solid Scientific Production And Genuine Intellectual Innovation.
This Historical Human Obsession With Searching For A Universal Language That Transcends The Curse Of Babel Extends To Horizons Beyond The Borders Of Our Planet Earth; Where Gordin Reviews The Amazing Attempts Made By Astronomers And Linguists Within The Framework Of The “Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence” Project, Known Briefly As SETI. Since The Mid-Twentieth Century, Thinkers Like Hans Freudenthal Tried To Design A Complete Artificial Language Based On Pure Mathematical Logic That He Called “Lincos”, Which Is An Abbreviation Of The Latin Phrase “Lingua Cosmica”, With The Aim Of Crafting Encrypted Messages That Hypothetical Extraterrestrial Civilizations Could Decipher And Understand Without The Need For Prior Earthly Cultural References. These Cosmic Efforts Reflect The Absolute Climax Of The Ancient Human Dream: The Overwhelming Desire To Find An Ideal, Frictionless Language Capable Of Uniting Minds Across Vast Distances, Which Is The Same Desire That Once Drove The Ambitions Of Seventeenth-Century Philosophers And Esperanto Linguists. However, The Great Historical Paradox That The Book Leaves Us With Is That The Language Of Global Scientific Communication Today Is No Longer A Neutral Artificial Language Nor Pure Mathematical Logic, But It Is A Natural, Historical, And National Language, Imposed By Shifts In Military, Economic, And Political Power, Leaving Contemporary Scientists Living In A Babel Whose Walls Have Been Demolished, But Only So That Everyone Speaks Inside Its Ruins With A Single English Tongue.
