Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!hwcs!zen!frank From: frank@zen.co.uk (Frank Wales) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: foreign language requirements for PhDs Summary: nope Message-ID: <1542@zen.UUCP> Date: 13 Mar 89 11:05:15 GMT References: <7287@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <2851@eos.UUCP> <401@rb-dc1.UUCP> <21572@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <1280@wpi.wpi.edu> <134@cs.columbia.edu> Reply-To: frank@zen.co.uk (Frank Wales) Followup-To: misc.misc Organization: Zengrange Limited, Leeds, England Lines: 85 [I'm directing follow-ups to misc.misc, unless you think of something better.] In article <134@cs.columbia.edu> kan@cs.columbia.edu (Victor Kan) writes: >Literacy in a foreign language for PhDs is not just some >arbitrary, nice idea for a magic solution to the world's problems >as Lawrence Foard suggests. I don't think he did go quite that far... >Foreign language requirements (FLRs) are meant to give >undergraduates in the liberal arts an appreciation for other >cultures and to make the students better human beings. A laudable goal, and I am glad that I can speak a foreign language (albeit with a rusty vocabulary ;-)). >But at the PhD level, FLRs are intended to provide students with the >ability to read important works in their original form. I can't agree with this at all. If it is important research, it will get translated, and the translations aren't *that* bad, certainly not in the refereed journals. >But technical translations >can suffer just as much as literary ones, particularly in clarity >and truth. If this is the case, a follow-up clarification will appear (unless no-one else finds the ambiguities you do, which would seem unlikely). >Consider this hypothetical example: >[example of P and V deleted] I have to say that knowing the origins of P and V doesn't help me remember which is which; I also have to say that I don't believe it matters. I remember by functionality -- if I *need* to know which is P, I look it up. To read and understand the important works and developments in virtually any scientific and technical discipline, a good knowledge of English is enough. >I'm not suggesting that everyone learn every language so they >won't be confused by translations. But knowing a little about >many languages or a lot about one foreign language will certainly >make a PhD student more receptive to foreign works. Unfortunately, foreign works aren't written in "foreign", but in French, German, Japanese, Russian, etc.. Knowing a little about German won't help you read an engineering paper from Dortmund. Speaking it fluently won't help you read a CS paper from Lausanne. I know a number of fine researchers whose knowledge of other languages is effectively zero -- are you going to tell me that they are somehow crippled because of this? Or, worse, that they ought to be? >I'm in favor of FLRs for PhD students. I'm in favour of requirements which are relevant to the study being undertaken. >I intend to be a PhD >student someday and I know four languages, at varying levels of >fluency. Unfortunately, none of the FLRs I've seen would accept >those four languages. But you know four languages already! Isn't this enough? Or do only certain languages count these days? >Looks like I'll have to learn French. What a terrible thing. :-) By the way, regarding that summary line... >Summary: they're quite useful and should be required Well, juggling is very useful (hand-eye coordination), physical fitness is important (longevity and stamina), and demonstrable management smarts are becoming increasingly important in society today, so why not only allow athletic dextrous MBAs into PhD programmes? [The point is, a lot of things are "quite useful," but that doesn't mean they're "absolutely essential."] -- Frank Wales, Systems Manager, [frank@zen.co.uk<->mcvax!zen.co.uk!frank] Zengrange Ltd., Greenfield Rd., Leeds, ENGLAND, LS9 8DB. (+44) 532 489048 x217