[Taxacom] Latin anyone?

[Richard Zander]

Until computerized quality of translation from English to Latin and vice versa gets orders of magnitudes better, I think we better keep the Latin requirement for new names. 

I can't imagine using computerized translation for descriptions in Chinese, Japanese, and Hindi into English, much less find them in journals. 

Try this with English to Latin. Is the Latin comprehensible, especially with technical words like strigose and whatnot? (Then ry back to English again):
http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=pT#en|la|

One might suggest that knowing Latin well and ones own tongue might be sufficient for anyone in the world to do alpha taxonomy, particularly if we focus on learning/teaching adequate Latin to taxonomists. 

Are there any testimonials from taxacom zoologists who have found peace and serenity in not having a Latin requirement for publishing new names? Or problems and frustration? I mean testimonials of non-Latin foreign language descriptions, not logical or moral arguments one way or the other. Is your reading of the non-English literature, particularly that in non-Latin alphabets, a problem when searching for or reading descriptions of new taxa? 

Botany has had proposals every Congress for eliminating the Latin requirement, and every time it is defeated. Apparently we botanists fully expect that non-English alpha taxonomists will not necessarily publish in English, and have prepared for this.

 
* * * * * * * * * * * * 
Richard H. Zander 
Missouri Botanical Garden, PO Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299 USA 
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/ and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm
Modern Evolutionary Systematics Web site: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/21EvSy.htm



-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Francisco Welter-Schultes
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:51 AM
To: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU; Neal Evenhuis
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Latin anyone?

http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=pT#la|en|

Thanks Neal, for having brought this to my attention. I had seen that 
they had added some languages in Google Translator but we were not 
aware that Latin was among them.

Translating Latin diagnoses into English, Spanish and French works 
better than into German (this is not surprising), into Spanish and 
into French does not work better than into English (usually 
translating from one Roman language into another Roman language works 
better than if English is involved). Quality of translation for 
Latin-English is definitely lower than for Spanish-English, 
French-English or Italian-English, many Latin words and grammatical 
constructions (words like coeruleoque) are not recognized, especially 
those of the bioscientific slang used in the 1700s and 1800s (fascia 
and such terms). But in any case it is way better than anything we 
had used before.

Francisco

University of Goettingen, Germany
www.animalbase.org

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