TRANSLATION: Science

Science. Writing. Is. Translating.

When will everybody understand science? I imagine scientists scratching their almost bald head whenever they are fielded grade school questions from grown ups. I hope it does not frustrate scientists that most people really cannot understand or do not have a great interest towards science.
A factor of this is that scientists often cannot or do not tanslate the language of science into words laymen use and understand.
I really believe scientists must be good communicators too. Unless they can take what it is in their minds and transform it into communicable and understandable structures of words and sentences, then science really needs help. That is where science journalists come in.
Writing about science is translating. As an interpreter of the Chinese language, I see no difference between my job (my little enterprise of translation services in Chinese) and that of a writer writing about science.
As with translation, the writer needs to be familiar and understand both languages he is working on: the scientific and the mundane, the elaborate mathematical formula and the simple sentence.
Translation is very important in business, politics and almost every aspect of social life. Without translation, people will never understand each other. Without translation, globalization could not have occurred. Thus it is with the world, so it is with science.
Writing about science is worth any writer’s time and attention. It is a challenge, of course to learn a scientific subject well enough to tell it in words that laymen can and will understand. And most importantly, it is every writer’s job to make something of importance known. Science definitely is something of importance that it shapes our present society and draws the path of our future.
And making that known to everyone is something a writer’s duty inherently entails: to make know, to inform, to educate.
Science writers do that by translation.