Science Communication in Multiple Languages Is Critical to Its Effectiveness

In 1967, English was recognized as the language of international science (Gordin, 2015) and it continues to dominate global scientific activities to this day. Around 80% of all journals indexed in SCOPUS are published in English (van Weijen, 2012). The linguistic domination of English is also observed in scientific journalism worldwide, which heavily depends on English-only sources (Nguyen and Tran, 2019). While the use of a single international language of science facilitates the dissemination of knowledge across national and cultural boundaries, the English language often acts as a gatekeeper to scientific discourse (Tardy, 2004). The hegemony of English in science promotes and enforces the imposition of one particular cultural point-of-view over others (Alves and Pozzebon, 2013). By ignoring other languages, traditional mass media (e.g., newspapers, magazines), social media, and scientific journals ignore the cultures and perspectives of non-English speaking communities (Gibbs, 1995; Canagarajah, 1996, 2002; Kachru, 1997). A recent Google search (February, 2020) of the term “science” in 11 languages with the largest numbers of native speakers exemplifies the disproportionate dominance of English (Figure 1). It is clear that English is overrepresented in these search results, even after normalizing for the total number of native speakers per language (Figure 1). One explanation could be that the term “science” may not be as engaging and meaningful as other science-related terms in other languages. An alternative explanation could be that scientific communication in a language correlates with scientific activity in the corresponding countries. Such is the case in the field of bioinformatics, where the nations with the highest impact (h-index) are those that are the most active in academic publishing (Chasapi et al., 2020). Nonetheless, English search results are still∼8 times more popular even when compared to languages spoken in countries with a strong history of scientific production like Germany and Russia (Figure 1). Facing the biggest existential threats to humanity requires understanding and support of science at a global scale, as exemplified by a multitude of climate-related natural disasters (Garcia Escobar and Rabanales, 2020; Stone, 2020) and the recent COVID-19 outbreak (Zarocostas, 2020). This opinion piece discusses some consequences of the (almost exclusive) use of English in the current global scientific landscape, and provides recommendations to expand both formal and informal science communication beyond the English language.