Hi all, As I'm new at this list, first I'll briefly introduce myself. I'm just a phd student from Argentina, in USA, studying intercultural -and multilingual- online communities and I found this debate very interesting. But as a Spanish-speaking researcher I think I can say a pair of things about this issue. Language is an obstacle even for those *very few* fortunate like me that can read, write, listen and speak English in a more or less acceptable level. But, even more, there are many excellent researchers in the world, specially those older and more experienced, for whom English is an absolute barrier, and because of that the mainstream research can't get their outcomes. I agree with Jarek that priorities are first, budget second. What is a sustainable project worth for without goals? But priorities are so difficult to agree with when parts don't share backgrounds, and perspectives. Unfortunately, we know there are no easy solutions for the old problem originated in Babel (talking about the Iraqi region... ;-). But as a start, I would humbly suggest to all English-speakers to make the effort of learning at least one foreign language and travel to a country were they have to use it to survive. That's an excelllent learning experience for anybody. Feeling what's to be 'minority' for a moment may help them to understand the need of addressing the language problem. Regards, saludos, Enrique Stanziola U of Maryland, Baltimore County On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 13:12:22 -0400, jeremy hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> wrote:
Ok, so we don't have the Pentagon budget. Can we afford the loss? I think that our priorities should be put first, then the money will follow, not the other way around.
then we go bankrupt:) no thanks:) sustainability is the first goal. if we don't exist anymore, we can't have goals....
Jeremy Hunsinger Center for Digital Discourse and Culture () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments
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