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

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.