Dear MARBENA Colleagues,
It was interesting to see how "hot" is the problem of knowledge or lack of knowledge of English language - this truly international contact
medium. Frustrated are both - native English, who do not know any word in any other language and other nationalities who cannot themselves write their papers in acceptable English; they use the help of not proper translators who are not biologists and even being
sometimes native English they produce curiosal texts.I do not believe that we could create a real "translation library". The only solution is the proper attitude towards the honest treatment of hitherto published literature, i.e. understanding that in the so called "grey literature" there were already published important data and they should be cited irrespectively of somebody's difficulties.Believe me - using dictionaries it is possible to read in various languages at least captions to figures or tables, or important paragraphs of text (for instance those surrounding the Latin name of particular species). Moreover usuallly in the journals published in other languages there is an English summary. But my experience shows that so-called "western" colleagues, and especially native English, are not willing to make any effort to cross this barrier of foreign language. I know - this is of course time consuming (also here "Sitzfleisch" is needed), but it is indispensable to respect the priority of somebody's results and avoid "forcing the open doors". By the way, as an encouraging example I can mention my old paper (1980) on range extensions of gammarids in Europe caused by human activity - it is up to now my paper of the highest citation index and this is surely due to the fact that among numerous references I was able to use and to cite 46 papers published in Russian (Cyryllic!) by Lithuanian, Russian and Ukrainian authors. Full translation should and could be possible only in case of large mononographs with keys (like the excellent book on Rumanian amphipods by Carausu, Dobreanu and Manolache, 1955, or the monograph of the world
Hyperiidae published in Russian by Vinogradov, Volkov and Semenova, 1982 - this book is already translated to English). But this concerns the past. Actually and in the future of course I am of the opinion well expressed by Jan Marcin - now we, the NAS scientists, should
obligatorily publish our scientific results in English, possibly in the best journals, publishing in native languages only scientific-popular
textes, reviews etc. When I've stated in my opening address that "we need time to recover" I understood also that we need time to teach new generation the perfect English (well, let it be at least moderate) - and this is realized. With satisfaction I observe that 14 years after the break of this awful communistic system the knowledge of English language among my students increased by at least 100%.
However, what was already published earlier, irrespectively in which language, should be recognized by the scientists just because such an
attitude is simply the honest one and difficulties are not an excuse.
I like very much the idea of Henn Ojaveer who has suggested transect method to be applied in Baltic biodiversity research. What concerns the choice of "sub-basins" I think that recommended areas should be those which were studied already for a long time. In the southern Baltic Sea such basins could be Kieler Bucht, Greifswalder Bodden, Bay of Puck, Gulf of Riga. There exists a huge literature concerning these basins. May be also Szczecin, Vistula and Kuronian Lagoons are worthy the special monitoring since the drastic faunistic changes in last decade, caused by the invasion of alien species, are especially visible just in these water bodies.
I think that we should precisely define what is "alien" and what is "invasive". In my opinion the first term is wider - not all aliens are
invaders; an invader would be the species developing very rich populations in newly conquered area, becoming dominat in the community
on the cost of native species. I have already heard from Jan Marcin, and now Sergey mentioned the same: same colleagues (from North America?) are concerned with the use of such terms like "alien" or "invader" that are "politically non-correct" - provoking "xenophobic feelings". My God! Let us not fall into one more stupidity! I see no reason to equal human beings with other living organisms and to change vocabulary because of these foolish "political correctness" invented by people who deserve a good Russian definition "Z zhira besjatsja" - that means "They are fool from welfare".
Krzysztof Jazdzewski |
