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What's the point of inserting untranslated French text into an English article? Is it supposed to just be window-dressing? Is it supposed to promote the (outda

by gaur 11y ago

What's the point of inserting untranslated French text into an English article? Is it supposed to just be window-dressing? Is it supposed to promote the (outdated and highly dubious) notion that all educated people speak French? Is it just for the author to show off? Whatever the reason, it's a highly obnoxious practice and it doesn't improve the article.

alphydan 11y ago
from the downvotes, il semble que vous êtes le seul a ne pas parler français dans ces contrées ;)
Rexxar 11y ago
The author just probably like Leibniz a lot and prefer to make the citation in the original language of the text. Would you have preferred Latin or German ? Leibniz used them too.
- gaur 11y ago
  > Would you have preferred Latin or German? I could get by with German, but that's beside the point: the essay is written for an English-speaking audience, so it's stupid to insert extended passages of foreign text without providing translation.
  - jeffsco 11y ago
    Obviously nobody is forcing you to read it. Perhaps it's written for an English speaking audience that doesn't mind skipping over some French here and there.
umanwizard 11y ago
Come on. Looking up what the quote means takes like 1% of the effort of understanding the article. You shouldn't jump to assuming malice when someone's aesthetic tastes differ from your own. By the way, the quote means (my own translation): > God chose the one which was the most perfect; that is, the one which whose hypotheses were the simplest, and whose phenomena were the richest. > But when a rule is very intricate, that which follows it seems irregular.
jeffreyrogers 11y ago
I found that slightly annoying as well, since elsewhere on the site they translate from French. For mathematicians of a certain age knowing how to read French, English, and German is pretty common since often mathematics papers were only available in one language. So, my guess is that because of when the author was educated this is just normal for him.

by gaur 11y ago

alphydan 11y ago

from the downvotes, il semble que vous êtes le seul a ne pas parler français dans ces contrées ;)

Rexxar 11y ago

The author just probably like Leibniz a lot and prefer to make the citation in the original language of the text. Would you have preferred Latin or German ? Leibniz used them too.

gaur 11y ago
> Would you have preferred Latin or German? I could get by with German, but that's beside the point: the essay is written for an English-speaking audience, so it's stupid to insert extended passages of foreign text without providing translation.
- jeffsco 11y ago
  Obviously nobody is forcing you to read it. Perhaps it's written for an English speaking audience that doesn't mind skipping over some French here and there.

umanwizard 11y ago

Come on. Looking up what the quote means takes like 1% of the effort of understanding the article. You shouldn't jump to assuming malice when someone's aesthetic tastes differ from your own. By the way, the quote means (my own translation): > God chose the one which was the most perfect; that is, the one which whose hypotheses were the simplest, and whose phenomena were the richest. > But when a rule is very intricate, that which follows it seems irregular.

jeffreyrogers 11y ago

I found that slightly annoying as well, since elsewhere on the site they translate from French. For mathematicians of a certain age knowing how to read French, English, and German is pretty common since often mathematics papers were only available in one language. So, my guess is that because of when the author was educated this is just normal for him.