And most importantly, how are people okay with the state things are now? — Seth72

Well, we drudges muddle along somehow. Not all that much of our uninteresting, narrow lives requires a great deal of precision, and generally takes place within a particular location in which a particular language is in exclusive use or predominant. So, the possibility of being confused by the use of other languages or the need to translate them is minimal. I can't remember the last time I needed to translate a document written in Walloon or was confronted by someone speaking Euskara.

Latin apparently worked rather well as a "universal" language at one time, at least for legal, administrative and military uses among peoples of different languages during the Roman Empire, but beyond that I don't know what to suggest.

No doubt you scientific types will be able to communicate telepathically soon enough, so perhaps this won't be a problem for long.

Esperanto?

Compounding this situation is that even in a discipline there may be differing definitions of a single word. For instance, in math, varieties can mean several (but closely related) things in abstract algebra, and duality can mean various things.

So the problem that you identify is that scientific and engineering communication requires a common language. But whatever lingua franca happens to be used (nowadays it is most often English), it won't be native to all speakers. And when people are forced to use a foreign language for communication, that often leads to miscommunication and associated problems.

And your solution to this problem is to invent an entirely new language (never mind that a number of such languages have already been invented over the years) that won't be native to anyone and that no one today speaks at any level of proficiency?

Um, how is this going to help again?...

Is choosing an universal language and sticking to it really so hard? Can't we create a language that uses very few vocal sounds so that everyone can become fluent in it, and is made to be internally consistent? And most importantly, how are people okay with the state things are now? — Seth72

I can see the utilitarian justification for your appeal, especially in a context like CERN. But the problems with translation is not ‘misinformation’. ‘Misinformation‘ suggests a deliberate attempt to mislead. Certainly ‘communications problems’ are a problem, but calling the result ‘misinformation’ has connotations. Which is ironic, in the context.

As for ‘universal languages’, I do know there is an artificial language called Esperanto (mentioned above) which was created for just this purpose, but it never took off; it’s still in the province of enthusiasts.

As for universal languages generally, the fact that different languages and cultures exist is a precious thing, although maybe not useful for nuclear science.

And besides - what about mathematics? Surely that is the nearest thing to the universal language especially in respect of physics.

Is choosing an universal language and sticking to it really so hard? — Seth72

Maybe the solution to the babble of languages at CERN is to provide everyone with a Babel-fish. :grin:

Babel-fish : https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Babel_Fish

Babel-fish : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_Fish_(website)

Is nobody afraid of the disasters that that can bring? — Seth72

Uh, do you know what CERN is? Lol. Let's just hope it's a contained one instead of a planet destroying one.

Is choosing an universal language and sticking to it really so hard? Can't we create a language that uses very few vocal sounds so that everyone can become fluent in it, and is made to be internally consistent? And most importantly, how are people okay with the state things are now? — Seth72

1º Yes, on human history, the "global" language was always the language of the dominant power, and everyone used it not because it was easy or some grand idea of unity, but because if they didn't use it, they would be very jeopardized. English will not be forever the "human language"; at some point in the future, another language will take its place - As how things are going now, i'm heavily inclined to say that it would be arabic, but who knows? -

2º Language is not created, it's learned and changes with the passing of time. Ex: Latin existed, and through the years it was blighted and turned into the romance languages - Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, Occitanian, you got the idea -.

3º What do you expect when you study the late Roman Empire? Yeah, so what do you expect from humanity now? - Our globalized - disgusting - society is almost identical to the ancient Greco-Roman world, just better technology and different cultures -.

And translation in general is a mess. Not just the grammatical errors, but some statements become clearly ambiguous — Seth72

That can't be true. As far as I know, although scientific language is a subset of ordinary language, all words used in science are given precising definitions - no room their for ambiguity, my friend. That goes for all other languages e.g. the scientific language in Chinese or Hindi or any other language consists of precisely defined words annd terms; scientific terms and words in one language exist in a one-to-one correspondence with terms and words in other languages. In such a tightly regulated linguistic environment there is zero chance of ambiguity, grammatical errors maybe but grammatical errors don't contribute so much to confusion as does ambiguity.

. . . all words used in science are given precising definitions - no room their for ambiguity, my friend. — TheMadFool

In math, as I have mentioned, there can be ambiguity regarding a word. Once it's placed in context such ambiguities may disappear.

In math, as I have mentioned, there can be ambiguity regarding a word. Once it's placed in context such ambiguities may disappear — jgill

An example will help to make your case here.

Wiki: "In mathematical contexts, duality has numerous meanings[1] although it is "a very pervasive and important concept in (modern) mathematics"[2] and "an important general theme that has manifestations in almost every area of mathematics".

Varieties in algebraic discussions.

From Stackexchange, when asked, What do mathematicians mean by "form"?

" 'Form' doesn't really mean anything on its own. It's a historical label that got attached to a few things and then got attached to a few other things by analogy. Forms are usually like functions, but not quite, or something. I wouldn't worry too much about it. – Qiaochu Yuan Jul 20 '16 at 7:36
It would be interesting to track down specific first occurences (of "differential form", "modular form" and the like). For example, in Classical Invariant Theory, "form" more or less meant "homogeneous polynomial". I'm ready to believe that this meaning was influential in the naming of differential forms, or modular forms, but a serious historical inquiry would be necessary to establish that..."

Different authors use terms their own ways at times. I recently used "form" while discussing linear fractional transformations in a specific context, but others haven't.

Things are not quite as precise and tight in the general math community as one might suspect. But inside a particular sub-discipline they usually are.

Wiki: "In mathematical contexts, duality has numerous meanings[1] although it is "a very pervasive and important concept in (modern) mathematics"[2] and "an important general theme that has manifestations in almost every area of mathematics".

Varieties in algebraic discussions.

From Stackexchange, when asked, What do mathematicians mean by "form"?

" 'Form' doesn't really mean anything on its own. It's a historical label that got attached to a few things and then got attached to a few other things by analogy. Forms are usually like functions, but not quite, or something. I wouldn't worry too much about it. – Qiaochu Yuan Jul 20 '16 at 7:36
It would be interesting to track down specific first occurences (of "differential form", "modular form" and the like). For example, in Classical Invariant Theory, "form" more or less meant "homogeneous polynomial". I'm ready to believe that this meaning was influential in the naming of differential forms, or modular forms, but a serious historical inquiry would be necessary to establish that..."

Different authors use terms their own ways at times. I recently used "form" while discussing linear fractional transformations in a specific context, but others haven't.

Things are not quite as precise and tight in the general math community as one might suspect. But inside a particular sub-discipline they usually are. — jgill

Is this a reply to my question? If it is, it mustn't have escaped your notice that this ambiguity is within a given language and not a result of translation from one language to another. The OP is making the claim that ambiguity creeps in because of translations and that's not what's happening here. In fact cultures exposed much later to science than the West could have two different words for different concepts that were originally assigned to the same word by Western scientists, eliminating ambiguity instead of causing it.

Is this a reply to my question? If it is, it mustn't have escaped your notice that this ambiguity is within a given language and not a result of translation from one language to another. — TheMadFool

I was referring to my previous post:

Compounding this situation is that even in a discipline there may be differing definitions of a single word. For instance, in math, varieties can mean several (but closely related) things in abstract algebra, and duality can mean various things. — jgill

The meetings and conferences I attended were in English and I never noticed a problem with languages.
I was referring to your post:

As far as I know, although scientific language is a subset of ordinary language, all words used in science are given precising definitions - no room their for ambiguity — TheMadFool

(Comment posting is malfunctioning)

From what I understand, most reports are standardized to be written in English, but this only means that most scientists hastily translate their words into the standard language. And translation in general is a mess. Not just the grammatical errors, but some statements become clearly ambiguous. Different languages do not have a direct word-to-word translation to other languages. — Seth72

Do you think the formulations would get better if they translated their thoughts on the fly? Imagine taking notes during a phone-call - might be better that even a single exact version of the note exists I guess (no matter in what language). In that case, if something is unclear, your colleague might be able to figure out what he meant by looking up in his original notes. If the ambiguous version is all that is left, then... good luck.

I know that problem from writing technical descriptions. I translate them on-the-fly and when I re-read them I recognize that I would not be able to exactly figure out what happens. This gets more serious the more exact the description must be. Getting that right often requires reformulating the whole paragraph.
I guess this is not only my bad english. I think in german. You start writing and recognize too late that, in English, you will never be able to put that into a single, precise sentence. So you have to go back and break it up. In the meantime, you forget what you wanted to say. Even professional translators often lag behind the original speaker quite a bit when doing live-translations. My feeling is this gets worse and worse the more complex the matter.

OK, there's a lot of different responses here but let me try to address some of the main points.

First of all, a "native" language simply refers to the language a person learned first, it does not mean the person can only truly express themselves with that language. I learned English when I was around 16 and I am as fluent as any native speaker, I have been told that by native speakers themselves.

Second, the new language I proposed wouldn't be nearly as complex as any existing language as it would be only used for scientific communication and not for self-expression. Many here mentioned Mathematics and that's the basic idea. The problem right now is that we do not have a universal way to pronounce mathematics without using a second language that comes with too much baggage.

And on that note, TheMadFool noted that you can use any language used scientifically has precise definitions. Two problems with this: First, if that were true, you could put scientific articles through Babel (like some idiot mentioned) and get a fully comprehensive text, which is simply not true. And second, non-universal languages that are used professionally outside of scientific articles, for instance a debate about a logical system, is spoken without regard for being translatable in a one-to-one fashion and just reflects how the person is used to speaking.

Some mentioned Esperanto. That is not a language created with logic in mind, as just like any other language it has multiple words to signify similar concepts and its rules are not 100% consistent either. Besides that, phonetically speaking, the language has to be as simple as the simplest language so that anyone can become completely fluent in it without having to be born speaking it.

Gus Lamarch mentioned how language is not still, but it changes. That's because every language created so far lacks a consistent set of rules, allowing them to change and "evolve". Languages evolve to be able to better communicate human aspects such as culture. A language used for science does not need to evolve, it can be created with all that is necessary for cohesive communication.

In short, the creation of a new, cohesive, language is something perfectly feasible. And so is becoming fluent in it. So far the only convincing argument I have for scientific and professional institutions to keep using culture-based languages is because people are too lazy to adapt. The same way we keep using the word "atom" (lit. indivisible) for something that is not indivisible.

Then again, the whole "new language" idea was a mere proposal as to a possible fix, but everyone here decided to focus on that apparently. It would already help a lot if the current universal language, English, was more forcefully required for professional work.

I guess part of the problem is that not everybody readily accepts English as universal language, because of other then scientific reasons, political mostly. You are probably well aware of language rules in the EU. If you think language is a problem in the scientific community, then multiply that by I don't know how much, and you get an idea of the difficulties it brings on the governmental level. At least in the scientific community there is some agreement to use a universal language... which is not evident at all, certainly not now the UK will no longer be a part of the EU.

But I take it that your gripe is that the people don't need to know a lot of English to get accepted at CERN. Considering the funds for CERN come from a host of different countries, they probably want some of "their" scientists working there irrespective of how good their knowledge of English is, and irrespective of how good that it is for the actual advancement of science in 'general'. That's probably an unfortunate consequence of how the Center is governed and funded, and hard to remedy. Suppose for a second there is no French physicist that speaks English good enough to be accepted at CERN.... French funding agencies would quickly ask themselves the question why they keep investing in it since there is no direct return on investment then for 'their' scientific community.

I think you hit the nail in the head there. The fact that an institution made for scientific purposes has to depend on politics and the like to even exist, is the root of the problem.

Like you said, I doubt there's an easy way to fix this. Personally, my problem with this is that one is forced to consider politics and the random whims of society even when they choose to work with something that is supposed to be purely scientific. CERN, or any other institution for that matter, is not disconnected from these matters.

Actually I think I would be much better off working for something outside the realm of science altogether. At least there, all of this is par for the course. Humanity as of now is incapable of creating a purely scientific environment.

Here's part of the problem, from the CERN statutes :

Article I.1.4 Languages
The official languages of the Association shall be English and French. In the case of doubt concerning
the interpretation of these Statutes, the original text, established in French, shall be deemed authentic.

This is something that has to be included for the French, they legally cannot agree to be part of an organisation that does not explicitly state this in its founding documents because the French constitution demands it.

Like you said, I doubt there's an easy way to fix this. Personally, my problem with this is that one is forced to consider politics and the random whims of society even when they choose to work with something that is supposed to be purely scientific. CERN, or any other institution for that matter, is not disconnected from these matters. — Seth72

Well yes, there are some guarantees for independence for the scientific community, but at the end of the day the funding for science does come from society. So I suppose only by virtue of that fact alone, there will never be complete independence.

I think you're basically trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. It's a fact of life that scientists speak divergent languages, trying to solve it by imposing some artificial solution on top of that would be both impractical and, ultimately, authortitarian. Besides, philosophically, it can be questioned whether there is a single objective reality shared by all peoples towards which science is inexorably converging. What if, for instance, something about the way one language conceptualised the nature of things happened to lend itself to the solution of some knotty scientific problem? Sounds unlilkely, but you can't rule it out.

Actually I think I would be much better off working for something outside the realm of science altogether. At least there, all of this is par for the course. Humanity as of now is incapable of creating a purely scientific environment. — Seth72

I struggle to say something helpful about this, because there always seem to be trade-offs. But I suppose if you are the kind of person that wants things to advance, that wants to have a sense of actually working together towards a common goal, science and the larger public sector can be frustrating to no end. Some, some mind you, companies in the private sector might be a better bet then because there does seem to more unity in direction there.