Schrödinger’s cat, Einstein’s relativity, global warming, the double helical structure of dna… If you recognise these concepts despite not being a scientist, that’s probably thanks to popular science. Science has always been seen as using a very specialized, exotic, somewhat obscure language. This isn’t arbitrary: that technical language responds to the need of precision, rigour and accuracy present in scientific fields. However, we can’t deny that this ‘lexical anomaly’ actually contributes to estranging the public from science. And here’s where public science comes on the scene: it helps ‘translate’ scientific theories and discoveries into a less specialized language, understandable for ordinary mortals.
Nevertheless, once the lexical barrier has been overcome, a second one remains: the linguistic barrier. You might not be aware of it if you speak German, Spanish or, especially, English as your mother tongue, but those languages with less speakers (such as Swahili, Basque or Galician) can’t afford such a wide variety of scientific literature: Galician scientists usually communicate their findings in Spanish or English in order to reach the broadest possible public; translating very specialized textbooks into little widespread languages isn’t cost-effective… All these factors widen the gulf between ‘big languages’ and the rest of them.
This is the goal of Ciención de Breogán. We weren’t born to produce new articles in Galician (we don’t rule that out either though, but there are some sites such as GCiencia that can do that better than us), but to translate those articles that have already been published in other languages and that, in our opinion, also deserve to be offered to the Galician-speaking public.
Welcome to Ciención de Breogán. Browse the blog, comment, and if you’ve got any private suggestions, please feel free to send us an email to cienciondebreogan@gmail.com. See you!
Ciención de Breogán 