Lost in translation--on publishing philosophy in a non-native language

One more cautionary observation before we begin. The volume is published by Bloomsbury, which has taken over Continuum, the house which apparently had contracted the anthology. A number of the pieces unfortunately contain stylistic and grammatical inadequacies in expression. For some essays this is just distracting, but for others it is extremely frustrating. Clearly the publisher's copy-editing was highly inadequate. We can only hope that this will not become a trend with Bloomsbury. More significantly though, we cannot help but wonder whether it really is such a good thing for English to become the de facto lingua franca of European philosophy. This is perhaps unavoidable today -- not long ago, something called the 'European Science Foundation' produced a ranking of philosophy journals, and publication in languages other than English was initially used to relegate journals to the 'B' or 'C' category. Now, if Anglophone philosophy puts a premium on 'clarity,' as defined by composition models taught in Anglophone universities and less elsewhere, then the obligation to write in English seems to unavoidably place international colleagues in a bad light. In this reviewer's experience, the profession suffers from a pressing need to address this issue.--Hakhamanesh Zangeneh

There are (at least) three issues here:

(i) Especially given the high prices charged for their product, academic presses and journals have a professional obligation to maintain the highest standards of copy-editing. Cost-cutting measures do not inspire confidence. I have no ideological objections against outsourcing, but the recent (apparent) trend toward concentrating copy-editing philosophical texts in Bangladesh and India is not improving the situation. (I am probably not alone in having to correct the copy-editors; as my fellow NewAPPSers can testify, I tend to be the one needing correction!)

(ii) In many places grant agencies and university administrators are demanding publication in English (and in pre-established list of accepted journals and presses (recall my criticisms of ESF rankings here, here, and here)). This has salutary consequences, too: it makes research more widely accessible; in a lot of places the push for international publication practices can raise average quality (perhaps at the cost of more homogeneous, boring 'me-too' research). But as the review indicates, it puts a lot of stress on non-native speakers who in addition to learning quite technical/specialized philosophical languages/jargon also have to master an additional foreign language. As Gereon Wolters first pointed out to me, especially in environments where English is not the default-other-language among the educated classes this is a serious obstacle. (This is, in part, a generational/transitional issue.)

I leave aside considerations of justice and delay for future exploration the harms done by the linguistic/cultural parochialism among  professional philosophers trained in Anglosaxon countries (but recall Khan's criticism of Singer).

(iii) Zangeneh calls attention to the fact that works written in 'International Academic English' cast the authors of these works in a bad light in the context of a norm of 'clarity.' (There may also be other norms related to class issues that cast badly copy-edited work in a poor light. Outside a few areas of mathematical philosophy, language isn't just the medium of transmission but also the matter of philosophy. (Of course, mathematics is also a language, and mastering it may also create related issues.) One need not accept Quine-ian indeterminacy of translation to realize that something may get lost in the works of those that are not fully at home in English. This is not to deny that there may also be Nabokovian gains from working in a language that remains un-familiar. Yet, most of us won't be the next Joseph Conrad of philosophy, so as a profession we really need philosophically skilled, copy-editors.