The
Spanish language
Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the ...
is used in diverse areas of
science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...
and
technology
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, scien ...
. However, despite its large number of speakers, the Spanish language does not feature prominently in
scientific writing
Scientific writing is writing for science. English-language scientific writing originated in the 14th century, with the language later becoming the dominant medium for the field. Style conventions for scientific writing vary, with different focu ...
, with the exception of the
humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at t ...
.
One estimate puts the percentage of Spanish language publications in natural sciences and technology as 0.5% of the world total, a low number in view of the fact that Spanish is often considered to rank second or third among languages in various other metrics and estimates.
In the
humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at t ...
a similar estimate yields 2.81%.
[
Summarizing the status of the Spanish language in the sciences, researcher Álvaro Cabezas writes: "No serious scientist publishes his best works in a language other than English".]
The creation of new terminology in Spanish is due more to the translation of concepts from other languages than to the crafting of original ideas.
Bibliometric studies
Among Spanish-language articles indexed in Scopus from 1996 to 2011, 10.8% qualify as "Life Sciences
This list of life sciences comprises the branches of science that involve the scientific study of life – such as microorganisms, plants, and animals including human beings. This science is one of the two major branches of natural science, th ...
", 13.2% as "Physical Sciences
Physical science is a branch of natural science that studies non-living systems, in contrast to life science. It in turn has many branches, each referred to as a "physical science", together called the "physical sciences".
Definition
Phy ...
", 44.4% as "Health Sciences
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to health sciences:
Health sciences are those sciences which focus on health, or health care, as core parts of their subject matter. Health sciences relate to multiple a ...
", 29.6% as "Social Sciences
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...
, Arts
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...
& Humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at t ...
" and 2.0% as "Multi-disciplinary & Undefined".[ Thus a higher percentage of Spanish language content is published in "Health Sciences" and "Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities" than is the case for English, Chinese or Russian.][ Spanish shares this trait with Portuguese, Italian, Dutch and ]French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
.[
A bibliometric study of publications on the subject of " digital communication" indexed in ]Scopus
Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top- ...
and Web of Science found that in both databases, Spanish-language articles comprise around 6.5% of the content. Notably, in these databases various authors with articles published in Spanish were based in non-Spanish speaking countries.[ A 2014 ]Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...
search on the words "biodiversity" and "conservation" yielded Spanish as the language with the second most entries — far behind English and just ahead of Portuguese.
Causes for the limited use of Spanish
The Spanish language is one of many major languages with limited use in science and technology. The main cause of this is the proliferation of English in scientific writing, which has been ongoing since English displaced French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
and German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
as the languages of science in the first half of the 20th century.
Another cause of the scant publication of articles in Spanish in scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research.
Content
Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such ...
s is the fact that scientists from Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, ...
tend to form (at least in the 21st century) more partnerships with researchers from elsewhere in Europe or the United States than from other Spanish-speaking countries. As is the case with other languages, including the historically important German, writing in Spanish limits access to influential foreign journals.[ Spanish language journals and articles are systematically underrepresented in the ]ISI
ISI or Isi may refer to:
Organizations
* Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a classical conservative organization focusing on college students
* Ice Skating Institute, a trade association for ice rinks
* Indian Standards Institute, former name of ...
database, are disadvantaged by unfavourable assessments of impact factor
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as ...
, a widely used metric for evaluating scientific journals.[
The scientific policy of Spain has, since the 1980s, focused on promoting the international diffusion of research from Spain while not considering which language is used.][
]
Deficient language modernization
The Spanish language has not kept pace with the development of language in various fields of knowledge.[ Writing in 2007, Daniel Prado noted that ]Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
searches on Spanish terms do not often yield quality results, hampering the work of translators and editors.[
Scholar Enrique Alarcón explains the case of ]engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...
, where he posits three causes for the poor quality Spanish used in the subject - words exist but are unknown, confusion between similar but not identical concepts, and lack of precision when using terminology. The poor state of the Spanish language used in engineering may stem from the mishmash of engineering traditions and impossibility for individuals to have a classical education in multiple branches of engineering. Alternatively, the poor state of the language in engineering may derive from the lack of a previous tradition in certain subjects.[
By 2007, the Icelandic, Dutch, Danish and Swedish languages had ten to twenty times more financial resources invested in language care and improvement than Spanish, despite the small size of the communities and the economies of their respective countries.][
]
Proposed reasons to promote Spanish
Scholar Rainer Enrique Hamel points at three arguments to promote the use of Spanish in science:[
#Language diversity in science is good for reasons akin to why ecological diversity is good.
#Excessive use of English reinforces undesirable asymmetric relations in science.
#Scholars from Anglo-Saxon countries are adopting bad practices such as not reading research in languages other than English, reinforcing an unjustified privileged situation.
"Practitioners and policy makers" may not benefit from the adding up of new scientific information if it is not in a language they understand.][ An example of this are ]protected area
Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological or cultural values. There are several kinds of protected areas, which vary by level of protection depending on the ena ...
directors in Spain who self-report to have language barrier difficulties with publications relevant to carry out their work.[
]
See also
* Academic imperialism
*Spanish-language journals
Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Am ...
Notes
References
{{reflist
Sociology of language
Sociology of science
Science and technology