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Re: Report in Swedish, English or both?


From: massimo s.
Subject: Re: Report in Swedish, English or both?
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:26:03 +0100
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (X11/20090110)

Carl Fredrik Hammar ha scritto:
> I'm slightly torn however, partly because I'm more proficient in Swedish.

Perfect, it's your chance to become more proficient in English too.

> And partly because Swedish is in such a poor state when it comes to
> computer science.  Often terminology is borrowed form English even though
> there is viable Swedish words that could replace them.  It would be nice
> to make a contribution in this area.

I know about this concern (I'm an Italian molecular biology researcher),
but it's a canard, in my opinion. In technical contexts the English
words are always the ones dominating terminology. That's quite common
since people is so accustomed to read these words in English in the
technical literature that the English equivalent acquires a different
meaning in your brains.

For example, when someone talks about "protein folding" I immediately
understand what it means. If someone translates it in Italian
"ripiegamento di proteine", I have to *backtranslate it in English* in
my mind to understand actually what's going on.

This kind of "Anglosaxonization" in technical jargon is unescapable.
Live with it and write your thesis in English. It's the only way for
your work to be a contribution to technical literature worldwide.

m.




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