Talking Science Through Our Native Tongues

Many indigenous cultures in the world find it difficult to talk about science through their native tongue. As a result, people are unable to understand the concepts that would be vital to their own knowledge, enrichment, and development because of the language barrier. To exasperate the issue, scientific discussions have markedly been done from the Western perspective, making it less accessible to more obscure languages of the world.

Non-Western languages do not have the flexibility and historical breadth in order to describe various scientific concepts, since these originated from the West. Language structures may also hinder how these concepts would be translated into the language. For example, in my native tongue, it would be difficult to describe genetics because the concept either has never existed in the language or has been lost due to colonization. The only ways for these words to be included in the vocabulary is either to borrow from existing English or other Western concepts or to create words that would refer to those concepts. The latter would be more favorable to widen the horizons of one's own language but one would have to traverse a deeper path into the history of one's language in order to find new ways to modernize it.

But there are scientists and science journalists who are attempting to bring ownership of science to their culture by finding ways to incorporate scientific concepts into their language. These are groundbreaking efforts because this could allow further development of science and technology in far-flung areas that have access to a treasure trove of scientific finds. One example is in South Africa, where journalist Sibusiso Biyela, has tried to tell stories of scientific finds like dinosaurs in his native language, isiZulu. Despite the obvious struggles, he and many others are finding ways to navigate this previously uncharted terrain in the field of science and journalism. Read more on his efforts and discussion on science writing at The Open Notebook.

(Image credit: Viktor Radermacher)


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