Climate science is getting lost in translation
Understanding complex climate science can be tricky enough, even in your own language. So what happens when none of the mainstream climate information is published in your native tongue?
Most people are excluded from conversations and decisions about how to tackle the biggest threat to humanity because they can’t easily access accurate reporting.
Almost 90% of scientific publications are in English, explains Marco Saraceni, a professor of linguistics at the University of Portsmouth. “This is a staggering dominance of just one language. But English, often called a global language, is only spoken by a minority of the world’s population.”
Between 1 and 2 billion people speak English – so, as Saraceni highlights: “At least three-quarters of the world’s population do not speak the language in which the science about climate change is disseminated globally. At the same time, languages other than English are marginalised and struggle to find space in the global communication of science.”
You’re reading the Imagine newsletter – a weekly synthesis of academic insight on solutions to climate change, brought to you by The Conversation. I’m Anna Turns, senior environment editor, covering for Jack Marley, who is working out how to distinguish between an umlaut and an accent circonflexe. This week, we decipher what’s being done to improve climate literacy around the world.
Languages are a significant barrier to the global transfer of scientific knowledge, according to a 2016 study. Out of the 100 most prestigious scientific journals, 91 are published in the UK and US. Yet, the biggest effects of the climate crisis are being felt in the developing world.
This widespread language bias leads to inequalities, argues Saraceni. One way to break the barrier of English monolingualism involves using AI to promote multilingualism, he explains.
A noteworthy example is the work of Climate Cardinals, a US-based youth enterprise with a mission to “make the climate movement more accessible to those who don’t speak English”. Its network of thousands of young volunteers is translating climate information into more than 100 languages. Now, specialist Google tools are also being used to accelerate the translation of these resources.
Climate in the classroom
Even within English-speaking classrooms, not everyone engages equally with climate education, as UCL climate education researchers recently discovered when they surveyed more than 2,400 school pupils aged 11-14 in England.
Their study revealed that many disadvantaged pupils did not engage emotionally with the climate crisis. In contrast, pupils from more advantaged backgrounds tended to want to learn more, and were more inclined to take positive steps to help the environment.
The researchers found this variation in climate literacy and educational opportunities “highly concerning” – primarily because children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. “But these children’s limited capacity to engage with climate issues is also understandable,” they added, “considering the state of child poverty in the UK and the more immediate challenges they are probably facing.”
Thankfully, there is hope. By bringing creative activities and crafting into climate lessons, students can more easily connect with nature through art, reflect on their emotions, and experiment with storytelling. This, the study suggests, supports their sense of agency and empowerment. So, climate literacy is about way more than knowing the facts or learning the science.
Innovative storytelling can empower the deaf community too. This week, in a first for The Conversation’s UK edition, Audrey Cameron published an article in video form using British sign language, with the written translation beneath. Cameron, part of the sign development team at the University of Edinburgh’s Scottish Sensory Centre, explains how new signs for environmental concepts are designed to make it easier for deaf people to discuss climate issues:
The sign for ‘carbon footprint’ doesn’t attempt to combine signs for carbon and footprint. Instead, it shows carbon emissions being released into the atmosphere, with the speed of movement indicating emission levels. This approach makes complex concepts immediately understandable, eliminating the need for time-consuming finger-spelling.
Even scientists are excluded
Research published last year reveals the enormity of the language barrier faced by scientists who are non-native English speakers. The Australian translatE project was launched in 2019 to investigate the consequences of exactly this.
Tatsuya Amano, a lecturer in biological sciences at the University of Queensland, Australia, is part of the translatE project team. He notes that AI is useful, but is not being adopted by all academic publishers: “The British Ecological Society recently integrated an AI language editing tool into its journals’ submission system. However, some journals have banned the use of such tools.”
Henry Arenas-Castro, an evolutionary biologist also at the University of Queensland, goes as far as to describe academic publishers as “the gatekeepers of scientific knowledge”. His team reviewed the policies of 736 biological science journals, and found that most made only minimal efforts to overcome language barriers in academic publishing. Changing this could, he says, encourage the participation of a multilingual scientific community.
Amano encourages the scientific community to embrace diversity and reframe non-English speakers as an asset. “By transferring information across language barriers,” he explains, “non-native English speakers provide diverse views that can’t otherwise be accessed. They have an indispensable role in contributing to humanity’s knowledge base.”
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Diverse discussions
The University of Oxford’s Josh Ettinger studies how to promote successful climate discussions among diverse groups of people. By posing more questions about the issues and really listening to the responses, he says people can inspire more engagement with climate change.
Ettinger has designed an interactive online map that anyone can use to track the climate conversations they have – in any language – with others around the world. “By speaking with our family, friends and communities about it, we can help maintain the attention this crucial issue deserves, and widen the pool of people engaged in climate action,” he writes.
Miki Mori, a linguistics researcher based on Mayotte Island, off the coast of Madagascar, studies the language that local communities use to describe climate change. “Local fishers on Mayotte struggle to talk about the phenomenon because there is no established terminology for it,” she says.
“What my colleagues and I have learned offers some insight into the difficulties people in many cultures have with understanding climate change. In the grand scheme of climate change education and sustainability efforts, this seemingly minor problem of translation is in fact symptomatic of a larger, underlying issue regarding the relationship between humans and their environment.”
Strong spiritual and religious beliefs can inform people’s interpretation too. Mori explains: “The Maore fishers we interviewed, many of whom were of a deep Islamic faith, often responded with ‘Inshallah’, or God willing, when questioned about efforts the community could make in the future to address the problem. They saw these climate change-related events as out of their hands – as something only God could interfere with.”
So, Mori notes, translators such as the volunteers at Climate Cardinals should always consider the context of their work. “In their efforts to translate this research and related phenomena, they need to think carefully about how important words are translated and understood.”
Mori concludes that, because the need for climate change awareness will only rise, “care needs to be taken about how these concepts are lived, understood and talked about in non-western settings. Language is part and parcel of these efforts, and deserves to be considered more carefully.”
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