[Lingtyp] Citing text in European languages without translation

[Johanna Mattissen]

Dear all,

by the way, heaps of non-native speakers are forced to write in English 
and to read English, a language they have probably learnt at school. 
School English is just one variety of English, sometimes with outlooks 
on vocabulary of other varieties. Now, I have often come across native 
speakers using insider's idiomatic expressions and examples from 
different and lesser known varieties of English in their contributions 
without explaining what they mean. Paraphrasing would help in these 
cases as well.

Regards,
Johanna Mattissen

European Legal Linguistics

University of Cologne







Am 26.06.2020 um 05:56 schrieb joo at shh.mpg.de:
> Dear all,
>
> In linguistics, it is common to see in-text citation of text written 
> in different European languages without giving translation, such as an 
> English paper quoting French text without additional translation, 
> assuming that the reader is able to read these languages.
> I believe that this practice is problematic and we should not assume 
> the readers to be able to read French, German, or other European 
> languages (unless the topic of the paper is directly related to one of 
> these languages). Why do we assume the reader to read a European 
> language but not a non-European language such as Chinese or Turkish? 
> Clearly the latter two are also languages used extensively in academic 
> works, why should they almost always be given translation when 
> European languages like French or German are very often exempted from 
> translation?
> I would like to know your opinion on this. I’m writing this on this 
> mailing list because I believe this happens more often in typology 
> than in many other subfields.
>
> Regards,
> Ian Joo
>
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