The new online computer tools could help French regain a place in science.
In this week of the annual congress of the venerable French-Canadian Association for the Advancement of Science (Acfas), founded 100 years ago by Marie-Victorin among others, it is worth mentioning this possibility. A game changer may be brewing.
Which tools are we talking about? Almost everyone is familiar with the giant Google’s translation tool. We put a sentence in any language on one side. And on the other, appears the translation in the desired language.
We are getting less and less of the “Made in Turkey/Fabriqué en dinde” type of results, as was the case in the beginning.
Especially when we turn to other more refined means such as Deepl.com. Advances in artificial intelligence now make it possible to obtain translations that are very acceptable overall in a flash. The fascinating and controversial ChatGPT produces impressive ones. In other words, all of these tools reduce the number of hours spent revising and correcting a first draft of a machine-made translation.
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This new reality occurs at a time when, in Quebec and Canada, French is declining in science. Where researchers also feel compelled to spend a lot of time producing grant applications and scientific papers directly in English.
“According to the Observatory of Science and Technology, the proportion of scientific articles published in French in Quebec has fallen from 4.0% in 2000 to 0.6% in 2021,” wrote Bloc Québécois MP Maxime Blanchette- Joncas in our “Make the difference” section in February.
Even in the social sciences, in 1980, 50% of articles were published in the language of Molière; today it’s 70% in English.
There is even a kind of systemic discrimination against French in Canada, according to the results of a Radio-Canada survey published recently. Between 2001 and 2016, “among all applications submitted to the Canadian Institute of Health Research, 39% of applications in English were accepted, compared to only 29% of applications in French”.
The report exposed the position of an associate vice-rector at the University of Ottawa, Martine Lagacé, according to whom Ottawa must define as soon as possible a pan-Canadian strategy to support research in French, “otherwise French-speaking researchers will abdicate completely” .
We can only approve this request. Especially if the strategy in question takes advantage of the new IT situation. Which facilitates communications in the scientific Tower of Babel? But also to promote scientific production directly in French for the 320 million people in the world. Why bother to publish directly or only in English when you can translate your text effectively in a few seconds?
This would also promote the necessary cultural diversity in the sciences. Precisely, science has made us understand for a long time that language is much more than a simple tool of communication, it is a world, a universe, the possibility of developing unique perspectives.