[Sigiii-l] Plaza

[De Beer Jennifer <jad@sun.ac.za>]

To add to your thoughts, Sheila. The reverse is also true viz. that
valuable research may be published in languages other than English, that
if not translated to English, go 'unnoticed' and worse 'disregarded' in
the/an scientific community. This reminds me of a Spanish joke which
goes "What does one call someone who speaks many languages? Answer: A
polyglot. What does one call someone who speaks only one language?
Answer: An Englishman(!)"

Regards,

 --- 
Jennifer De Beer 
Lecturer in Socio-Informatics 
Centre for Knowledge Dynamics and Decision-making,  Information Science,

Universiteit Stellenbosch University http://www.sun.ac.za/InfoScience/ 
+27 (0)21 808 2071 (t)
+27 (0)21 808 2117 (f)
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: S.Webber [mailto:S.Webber at sheffield.ac.uk] 
> Sent: 17 September 2003 17:47
> To: sigiii-l at asis.org
> Subject: [Sigiii-l] Plaza
> 
> 
> Just a few thoughts - of a personal rather than a professional nature.
> 
> In terms of globalisation, there seems to be too much in terms of 
> corporations/ governments taking opportunities to create or exploit 
> markets, and too little in terms of growth of understanding of other 
> cultures, languages etc. As someone fortunate enough to be 
> brought up in a country (i.e. the UK) where the main language is a 
> dominant language (i.e. English) I become ashamed of the extent 
> to which others can speak my language, and disappointed 
> because knowledge of other languages has *not* become prized as 
> I feel it should in the UK. OK, I'm biased here because I studied 
> German at University. However, studying German did make me 
> more aware of what you miss of culture, discourse etc. by not 
> knowing the language (and how you saw a different side of people 
> when you conversed with them in their own language!) Carrying 
> over to one of my current professional obsessions, i.e. information 
> literacy, it has been pointed out by international colleagues that to 
> "be information literate in the information society" as well as being 
> *literate* you also need to be able to *speak English* in those 
> circumstances where there is a restricted amount of information on 
> the internet in your own language, where key textbooks and 
> journals are mostly in English, where you want to be able to 
> communicate with English-speaking experts to get information etc. 
> etc.
> 
> Sheila
> ---------------------
> Sheila Webber, Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, 
> University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. 
> Email s.webber at sheffield.ac.uk Tel. (0044) 0114 222 2641 Fax 
> 0114 278 0300 The Information Literacy Place: 
> http://dis.shef.ac.uk/literacy/ ... and now > the Weblog! 
> http://ciquest.shef.ac.uk/infolit/
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