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    Thirteen years ago, a deadly strain of avian flu known as H5N1 was tearing through Asia's bird populations. In January 2004, Chinese scientists reported that pigs too had become infected with the virus—an alarming development, since pigs are susceptible to human viruses and could potentially act as a "mixing vessel" that would allow the virus to jump to humans.
    13年前，一股名為H5N1的致命禽流感在亞洲鳥類中肆虐流行。2004年1月，中國科學(xué)家的報告稱：豬也會感染這種病毒——這是一項很有警示作用的進展，因為豬很容易感染人類的病毒，而且可能會充當“混合容器”，最終使病毒傳染到人類身上。
    Yet at the time, little attention was paid outside of China—because the study was published only in Chinese, in a small Chinese journal of veterinary medicine. It wasn't until August of that year that the World Health Organization and the United Nations learned of the study's results and rushed to have it translated.
    然而，當時在中國以外只有很少人關(guān)注，因為研究報告是用中文寫的，刊登在中國一份小型獸醫(yī)期刊上。直到當年的8月份，世界衛(wèi)生組織和聯(lián)合國才得知報告結(jié)果，緊急請人翻譯。
    Those scientists and policy makers ran headlong into one of science's biggest unsolved dilemmas: language. A new study in the journal PLOS Biology sheds light on how widespread the gulf can be between English-language science and any-other-language science, and how that gap can lead to situations like the avian flu case, or worse.
    那些科學(xué)家和政策制定者們都一頭扎進了科學(xué)界最難的一個未解悖論中：語言。PLOS Biology雜志的一項新研究關(guān)注了英語(精品課)語言科學(xué)和其它語言科學(xué)之間有多大的鴻溝，以及這種鴻溝會如何導(dǎo)致出現(xiàn)像禽流感案例這樣甚至是更糟的情況。
    "Native English speakers tend to assume that all important information is in English," says Tatsuya Amano, a zoology researcher at the University of Cambridge and lead author on this study. Yet particularly when it comes to work about biodiversity and conservation, Amano says, much of the most important data is collected and published by researchers in the countries where exotic or endangered species live—not just the United States or England. This can lead to oversights of important statistics or critical breakthroughs by international organizations, or even scientists unnecessarily duplicating research that has already been done.
    該研究的第一作者、劍橋大學(xué)動物學(xué)研究者天野達也說：“以英語為母語的人傾向于假想所有的重要信息都是用英語來傳達的?！比欢?，特別是涉及到生物多樣性及保護的工作時，天野達也說，收集和發(fā)表很多重要數(shù)據(jù)的研究人員都來自奇異或瀕危動物生活的國家，而非僅僅來自美國或英國。這可能導(dǎo)致國際組織忽視重要的統(tǒng)計信息或關(guān)鍵性突破，甚至?xí)尶茖W(xué)家們?nèi)プ霾槐匾?、已?jīng)做過了的重復(fù)性研究工作。
    Even for people who try not to ignore research published in non-English languages, Amano says, difficulties exist. More than half of the non-English papers observed in this study had no English title, abstract or keywords, making them all but invisible to most scientists doing database searches in English.
    天野還說，即使對于那些想努力不忽視非英語研究成果的人來說，也有很多困難。研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，半數(shù)以上非英語論文都沒有英語標題、摘要或關(guān)鍵詞，導(dǎo)致大多數(shù)用英語進行數(shù)據(jù)庫檢索的科學(xué)家完全找不到這些論文。
    It's also worrisome that English has become so prestigious for scientists that many non-English speakers avoid publishing research in their own languages, Amano says. Federico Kukso, a MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow who has reported on science in Spanish and English for more than 15 years, says the bias extends beyond how scientists view studies; it also manifests in what science the media chooses to focus on.
    天野說，還有一點令人擔憂的是，英語在科學(xué)家們看來已經(jīng)變得非常權(quán)威，所以許多非英語國家的人會避免使用本國語言發(fā)表研究結(jié)果。費德里科?庫克索是一位麻省理工大學(xué)奈特科學(xué)新聞學(xué)者，他已用西班牙語和英語發(fā)表科學(xué)研究逾15年，他說語言偏見已超出科學(xué)家們?nèi)绾慰创芯康姆懂?它還表現(xiàn)在媒體會選擇聚焦哪些科學(xué)研究上。
    Amano thinks that journals and scientific academies working to include international voices is one of the best solutions to this language gap.
    天野達也認為期刊和科學(xué)研究院努力收入各國聲音才是解決語言鴻溝的一種最好策略。
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