“One problem is language.”—The Economist 2018年11月17日号に興味深い記事が載っていました。中国・清華大学は2013年-2016年のmaths & computing 分野での論文引用数が世界第一位となりましたが、社会科学系分野からは次のような嘆きが聞かれるというのです。
“And while China’s universities forge ahead in the hard-science league table, they seem less likely to triumph in the social sciences. One problem is language. All the world’s leading journals are published in English. That matters less for hard scientists, who communicate mostly in symbols, than for social scientists, who use many more words. An academic in Tsinghua’s education department says Chinese social scientists complain that their best ideas are difficult to translate. “Writing papers for English-language journals is like competing in an exam that is set by the West,” she quotes them as lamenting.”
海外のジャーナルへ投稿するためには英語で論文を書かざるを得ないが、それは欧米圏が出題した試験で他と張り合うことに似ている、という比喩の意味はよく分かります。
