Tenure dossier question: publication not in English (translate???)

[new_anth]

Good afternoon, wise fora.

I'm wondering if you have any advice/best practices for what to do with a publication that's not in English. This isn't a piece written in English and then translated to Klingon, but written solely in Klingon.

Should I provide an English-language translation? I will have reviewers who read Klingon, but cannot expect everyone to.

(not really Klingon)

[Ruralguy]

If its your work, then I  would suggest that you provide a translation, but be clear that the original is in X.

[dismalist]

./.

[traductio]

Good afternoon, wise fora.

I'm wondering if you have any advice/best practices for what to do with a publication that's not in English. This isn't a piece written in English and then translated to Klingon, but written solely in Klingon.

Should I provide an English-language translation? I will have reviewers who read Klingon, but cannot expect everyone to.

(not really Klingon)

Kinda disappointed it's not really Klingon.

But, more seriously, is it a common European language (French, Spanish, German), and are you in a field where reviewers are likely to read that language? I ask only because I teach in a bilingual university (English and French), and my reviewers were both anglophones and francophones. (I saw redacted versions of their letters -- two in English, one in French.) Everything I submitted was in English, despite having some publications in French (which are mediocre -- that's why I didn't submit them). In the end, that wasn't a problem.

My colleagues who publish predominantly in French have a bit of a tougher time at this, as francophones in Canada are more likely than anglophones to be bilingual, which makes it harder to find reviewers with the right expertise. But even then, they submit things without translations, and in the six years I've been here, everyone has gotten tenure.

Just one data point, but I thought it might be useful.

[new_anth]

(I'm trying to not give too many identifying details... academia is *small*.)

I am in a book field, tenure is based on a book + book's worth of articles + convincing progress on a second project (could be publication, grant, presentation, book contract). I have all of that without this piece. This forthcoming piece demonstrates the traction that my research has gotten in my fieldsite.

I'll ask my department mentor what they suggest, but I'm guessing I should provide a translation. Uff...

[Hegemony]

I would provide an abstract/summary in English, but not a whole translation.

[Vkw10]

I would provide an abstract/summary in English, but not a whole translation.

Since you have a reasonable body of work in English, providing an English abstract for your Klingon work should be sufficient.

[jerseyjay]

I do not think you could go wrong providing an English abstract. I am not sure if you need to submit a cover letter for your dossier, but if you do, this would also be a place to summarize the piece and explain where it fits in with your broader work and the literature of the field.

More broadly, I think it depends on what your field is, what your school is, and what language it is in.

If (say) you study Latin America and you published an article in Spanish, or if you study French literature and you published an article in French, I do not see any real issue. Both are widely spoken modern European languages that many scholars should have a passing knowledge. Presumably anybody brought in to judge your scholarship would be able to read such publications.

If you are a physics professor who published something in Icelandic or a philosopher who published something in Korean, you might want to have some more explanation, both of what the articles say, and why you published them in the journals you did.

If all your publications are in foreign languages, you may want to explain. But if you have a book and 3 articles, and they are all in English except that one article is in German, you could probably argue that this underlines your international reputation.

I think it also matters if the language is widely spoken in the community you serve. My school is an Hispanic-serving institution, about a third of our students are Latino, and Spanish is widely spoken in the area we serve. My dean is both Latino and a specialist in Latin American literature. I published an article in Spanish in a Latin American journal (even though the subject itself is not about Latin America). In my covering letter, I explain how it relates to my broader research, but I did not translate it.

[saramago]

I would provide an abstract/summary in English, but not a whole translation.

Agreed.