Deborah Daley 00:06
Hello and welcome to Changemakers, a podcast series brought to you by Nature, where we shine a light on fascinating and extraordinary scientists.
I’m Deborah Daley, global chair of Springer Nature’s Black Employee Network, and I’m very proud to present this series where we explore exclusion in science and how some researchers are doing something about it.
In episode three, we meet a Japanese environmental scientist who believes that bringing down language barriers will result in improved knowledge-sharing, and in the long run, better research.
Tatsuya Amano 00:52
So my name is Tatsuya Amano, and I’m an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia.
My research area is conservation science, which is the science of how species and the environment on this planet have been changing due to the impact of human activities, and how we can solve the loss of biodiversity.
So I started my career as a conservation biologist, and then towards the end of my bachelor’s degree, I started working on the conservation of farmland biodiversity, for example, about species found in farmland in Japan. And that was still my main interest when I moved to the UK to start my postdoc.
But then I realized that so many people around us, around myself, have been struggling with the same problem as myself, which is the language barrier in science.
So that got me thinking, and that’s how I started working on the issue of language barriers in science. So I’m originally from Japan, so in Japan, I’m originally from Shizuoka city, which is relatively close to Tokyo.
I became interested in science when I think, when I was a high school student, you know, just like everyone else, you know, I became interested in science in general.
And then when I moved to Tokyo to start my undergraduate, I became interested in the application of scientific studies to some real-world problems, like on ground problems, and one of such topics was the conservation of biodiversity, the science of understanding how human activities are influencing the natural worlds on this planet.
And then I thought, this is a really interesting research area, and I wanted to pursue my career in this research area. And then that was when I became interested in the research in the UK, because the UK is one of the big countries where a lot of research on farmland biodiversity conservation was happening.
But then, yeah, just because Cambridge is so international, and there are just so many people from around the world in that one city, so I met so many people from around the world there, and then, before moving to the UK, I thought, you know, language barriers might be just my own problem, and it’s, you know, it’s my own fault.
I realized this is actually not only my problem, but it’s actually everyone’s problem. You know, everyone really struggles with this problem.
And that is exactly when I thought I should probably tackle this problem more directly, and then I should speak up to make a real difference.
Tatsuya Amano 04:02
I think language is one source of inequality in science, definitely. For example, for this interview, I even spent a not inconsiderable amount of time preparing my responses, because I know that otherwise, my responses in English would be far from fluent.
And I’m also, you know, now feeling very nervous as well. But if this interview was in my first language, which is, which is Japanese, I would not have had to spend so much time for preparation and practices as well, and will probably be more relaxed.
But the reality is that if you want to become a scientist, you would need to do most of your scientific activities, such as paper reading, paper writing, publication, research, dissemination and so on, in English, particularly at the international level.
So now you can imagine that if you’re not fluent in English, you would obviously struggle with every single process in science, and that is exactly why, in one of our recent papers, we showed that non-fluent English speakers spend much, much more time and effort when practice practicing science than fluent speakers.
So English is not the first language for 95% of the world’s population. So in theory, this number of people from around the world can be struggling with language barriers in every single type of scientific activities, like I said, such as paper reading, writing, publication and research discrimination in every single scientific activities.
So now you can imagine how widespread this issue is, and actually even more importantly, language diversity is closely linked to diversity in culture and ethnicity as well. So missing out on the participation of those people in science means we may be hindering access to a whole diversity of views, ideas, approaches and solutions, which are often key to innovation in science and solving many of the global challenges.
So I think this inequality has a huge impact on research and scientific communities.
Tatsuya Amano 06:30
So I have experienced discrimination as a non-native English speaker. Just as an example, recently, one of my co authored papers was rejected because the level of English did not meet the journal’s required standard.
So it was a straight rejection without review simply due to the quality of language of that manuscript. And unfortunately, it is still very common for papers to be rejected due to the level of English writing.
For example, in our recent survey, 38% of non-fluent English speakers reported that they have experienced paper rejection due to English writing.
So yeah, that was just one, one of my recent experiences.
Because I work on evidence-based conservation in my own research, I’m aware of the importance of having scientific evidence when making an argument, and that is exactly why, over the past six years, our Translate project has been working hard to produce scientific evidence that shows that many consequences for language barriers, not only for non-fluent speakers, but also for the entire scientific communities.
So we have published many papers that show the main consequences of language barriers for science so.
And you can see our research at the project website, which is translatesciences.com
And we are also proposing solutions to solve this problem.
For example, in our recent review articles, we provided a comprehensive checklist of 18 different actions that individuals, institutions, journals, conference organizers and funders can start adopting today.
Tatsuya Amano 08:30
In one of our papers, we provided a list of potential solutions to language barriers, to non-native English speakers, and obviously there are many things that even individuals can do. Like, you know, collaborators, supervisors can do.
But I believe that the role of journals, you know, academic journals, as the gatekeeper of science, is significant to solve in solving this problem. Forexample, journals might be able to establish linguistically inclusive policies to request editors and reviewers to clearly distinguish the quality of science from the quality of language when assessing manuscripts.
And they can also implement, for example, machine translation on their websites to increase accessibility.
But in one of our recent studies investigating policies of over 700 journals in biological sciences, we actually found that few journals currently adopt these measures to address language barriers in science.
So there are just so many things we should do, especially in those journals.
And there are a lot of things we can do at international conferences. For example, I’m now involved in the Australian committee for the International Congress for Conservation Biology 2025 which is to be held in Brisbane University in this June.
And at this conference, we are providing a number of supports for non-fluent English speakers, non-fluent English speaking participants.
So this includes, for example, providing an AI English editing service to all participants for free, or developing a mentorship scheme where non-fluent speakers can receive advice on how to best present their work in English.
And also implementing linguistically-inclusive policies for those submitting abstracts and giving presentations.
So I think the role of journals and conferences can be huge, and one of our recentpapers provides a list of things journals and conferences can do to solve this problem.
So Google Translate is one of the, you know, earliest machine translation tools, but now there are many other, you know, even better tools, like DeepL. So for Japanese, for example, DeepL is quite often much higher quality machine translation.
And now, you know, there are all sorts of AI tools as well. For example, you know, even ChatGPT can easily translate between different languages. So the role of AI tools, I mean, also, now, you know, everyone talks about AI, and this is highly relevant to this issue of language barriers in science, obviously, now everyone talks about AI, and indeed, this is highly relevant to the issue of language barriers.
So now many AI tools are emerging, and it clearly has huge benefits as we try to tackle this issue of language barriers in science, but at the same time, I think it may give rise to new inequality issues, because, for example, its performance can vary greatly among languages.
There are more than 7000 languages around the world, so for many languages, AI tools may not be available, and importantly, high quality AI tools are often not for free.
So I’m now really keen to talk and think about how we can make the most of AI technology to overcome and not further broaden equity, diversity and inclusion issues in science.
So this is a highly relevant topic, and something that interests me a lot. Recently, Open AI released something called Deep Research, which kind of, you know, automatically synthesize a lot of papers from the internet and then summarizes all the findings from those papers.
But to use that service, you know, it costs, you know, up to $US200 per month or something, yeah, you know.
So it’s quite expensive for many people, especially from for those people from the global south. So that definitely can be a source of another type of inequality.
More privileged researchers and more you know, people from high income countries may be more likely to benefit from those emerging AI technologies.
Perhaps another important thing to to improve language inclusion in science might be just being considerate.
You know, quite often people can’t understand how serious this language barrier is for non-fluent English speakers.
So for example, if you’re you know, a native English speaker, or if you’re a fluent English speaker, you can try to experience, you know, a situation where you can’t really communicate well with your language, with your first language.
And if you can experience that kind of situation, you can be considerate for non-fluent speakers, and that might make a really big difference for many people. So that is what I’m trying to implement at the conference I’m currently involved in the organization.
You know, trying to develop inclusive environment for non-native English speakers, non-fluent English speakers.
So if I was going to give advice to my younger self, I would say, go out into the world, meet new people and experience new cultures and new languages. And that’s because when I was a student, I had never thought about living in a different country, although I now live in Australia.
You know, only after getting my PhD, I started attending some international conferences and I was already 30 years old when I first moved to the UK.
But I’m now a strong believer that experiencing the diversity of people, culture, views and so on, brings innovation to science.
So definitely encourage my younger self, if I could, to go out into the world, meet new people and experience new cultures and languages.
Deborah Daley 15:30
In the next episode, we meet a South African data scientist who is determined to expand the use and benefits of artificial intelligence on the African continent.
