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Comment by Antibabelic | Hacker News Reader

Is it a good idea to start learning Mandarin in 2025 to be able to follow these Chinese scientific innovations?

This reason alone is unlikely to provide sufficient motivation to keep grinding away. Language acquisition can be a slog even though it's (eventually) super rewarding.

Let's put the question differently: let's imagine we already know Chinese. How much will we be potentially be able to capitalize on that knowledge in the coming years?

How much do you capitalize on reading papers that are written in English right now?

I would argue even for scientific collaboration the gains will be minimal. The LLMs are more or less capable of translating content in natural sciences biderectionally, and most researchers already have a passing knowledge of English. On the contrary I would not expect this to be applicable in humanities, since translating (for example) psychology material is much more nuanced.

On the other hand, IMO this would be quite influential in finding contacts for business or manufacturing.

I was looking through stuffs on vacuum tubes the other day. And all the interesting ones were already in the ever so slightly arcane versions of the language I'm most familiar with... that felt weird. But I also learned that ITO on glass was a common thing for a long time.

> let's imagine we already know Chinese

This is the case for many people. What else do you bring to the table?

Let's look at an example of a pretty closely related skill: imagine we're already literate. What's that worth?

If your goal is to get a foreign language to a level where you can meaningfully understand scientific works published in it, you're going to spend an incredible amount of time on it. (And will not likely meet it without immersion.)

If your goal is to follow them at a superficial level, waiting for someone else to translate the important bits, or using machine translation is going to be a much safer bet.

But don't just believe what I say. Ask any >50 year old PHD from a non-English speaking country (preferably an ex-Soviet block one, or an Asian one), they'll tell you how much of a nightmare reading English papers was for them.

Most important papers are already in English, are they not? Also I can't imagine how long it would take to learn the language to the point of being able to parse scientific texts. Maybe it's skill issue on my part but despite learning the english language since 2nd grade (i am almost 30 now with a degree earned in english) I still sometimes struggle with scientific papers

I feel like the time you would spend on the language is better spent on learning the actual science

by inertia science is done and will be done in English. Notwithstanding the Chinese/Japanese/Korean scientific journals - anything "big" gets translated. With LLMs the barrier for researchers to write in English is reduced

In the programming sphere on the other hand.. I get the impression there is a giant OSS Chinese community that doesn't do anything in English..

My Chinese is too crappy to follow technical topics - so it's possible my impressions are wrong

> anything "big" gets translated.

> With LLMs the barrier for researchers to write in English is reduced

Anything "big" gets translated to English. Not from English. With LLMs the barrier for researchers to read in English is reduced. Not to write. Researchers in China has no motivations to think or publish in English, and so they won't. It has always been that way, I think?

Not in my experience - but maybe it depends on the field. Publishing for major international journals is good for your career everywhere. Publishing for a small regional journal is the fall-back option.

> Anything "big" gets translated to English.

Do you have any specific examples of noteworthy recent research that was not originally published in English? I've honestly never come across it. (this used to be a thing a million years ago.. Soviet publications and really old stuff in German)

I'm not sure if your observations and my arguments contradict. My point is, lots of science happen in local languages and gets translated to English, rarely from English. English is the lingua franca as in LANG=C is always the fallback, not as in en-US.UTF8 is the interface default.

Germans discovered chemical formulas in German, Soviets did metallurgy in Russian. It's consistent that guys in China discuss AI and OSS bugs in Chinese. They support fallback modes and exported data is often converted to standard formats for the best exposure, but their internal formats are not always in English.

No, I don't have any examples to show, I just think "English is lingua franca of science" types of statement is misleading and create false impressions that the original researches always happen in English, not just the data exchange parts.

The original post was asking if he needs Chinese to "follow these Chinese scientific innovations". That would pretty much entail reading publications from Chinese scientists - which for the most part will be in English.

> It's consistent that guys in China discuss AI and OSS bugs in Chinese.

So if they internally at the lab/office talk in Cantonese or whatever seems irrelevant. If you want to work with Chinese researchers, then it's likely helpful to learn Chinese. But that wasn't the question

> Germans discovered chemical formulas in German, Soviets did metallurgy in Russian.

They published in German and Russian. Now-a-days they do not

Most code is write only , even in English.

a) important papers are published in English? and b) don't we have AI that's really good at natural language translation, especially within constrained contexts such as scientific papers?

China is a great place to do business, especially at the cutting edge.

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