From: clin@eng.umd.edu (Charles Lin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: English vs contents (was Re: New Problems in IJCAI Reviewing)
Date: 24 Jan 1993 01:35:08 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity von Uniland, College Park
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: feedback.eng.umd.edu
Originator: clin@feedback.eng.umd.edu


In article <C19qD9.Dn7@cs.uiuc.edu>, yang@milton.cs.uiuc.edu (Der-Shung Yang) writes:
>gh@cs.toronto.edu (Graeme Hirst) writes:
>
>>  (2)  Not always the author.  Trying to be helpful, in one review in
>>which I rejected a paper, I pointed out a number of consistent errors of
>>English made by the author, a non-native speaker.  A year later, a
>>revised version of the paper was sent for review by a different journal;
>>it contained the exact same errors.
>
>Just curious, did you reject that paper mainly becuase of some consistent
>English errors or because of some other reasons?  Also, what will you do
>if you review a paper that is excellent in contents but has some English
>errors here and there (assuming that those English errors do not cause
>any misunderstanding or unclearness)?
>

    I'm not an expert on these matters, but assuming the paper was
clear, then one would hope that this would be fine.   However, errors
in English can make be very distracting to the native English speaker,
and it is sometimes possible that the non-native speaker will interpret
some phrase one way, and that is not the commonly accepted way of using
a certain phrase.   It is, to be sure, an extremely daunting task for
non-native speakers to obtain a reasonably degree of fluency.  This
is sometimes compounded by the fact that for some nationalities, it is
quite common for people to associate with one another.   For example,
is common among Taiwanese or Chinese to speak among one another, but
almost always in Chinese or Taiwanese, due to their difficulties in
expressing ideas in English, that having to speak in English would
make it as futile as some people having meaningful conversations in
French who have only taken high school French.

     There are probably some who would claim that non-native English
speakers should attempt to learn English, and be very conscious of
how native English speakers talk.   I suspect that many non-natives
find so many exceptions to the language that they throw up their hands
and decide that the amount of English they know will get them by, and
they need not learn anymore.   I think this afflicts the Chinese more
than other countries because a lot of Chinese (and Taiwanese) come
to the US to study.   Unlike Indians, who also come to the US in great
numbers, but often have a very good mastery of English, the Chinese,
usually, do not.   People from other countries do not come in the
same numbers, and so sometimes, they have no choice but to speak
English, if they wish to communicate with anyone at all.

     Getting back to the main issue.   By presenting a paper clearly in
some language, this makes it less likley that there will be confusion
as to the points that are being made.   In fact, a complicated idea
which may be mathematically expressed might be made easier to understand
if one can present an intuitive notion of what is going on.  So, while
a paper should, in principle, be judged on its contents, clarity of prose
will do a lot to make the value of its contents realized.

--
Charles Lin
clin@eng.umd.edu
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