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Many graduate programs in math require students to pass a foreign language exam in French, German, or Russian. Why is this so? Haven't the important mathematical works in these languages been translated into English already?

I'm set on graduate school, so what should I do to become proficient in one of these languages? I feel like taking a language course wouldn't be particularly helpful as mathematical language is highly technical and different from common/everyday language.

user66020
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    Would this be considered more on-topic at academia.stackexchange? – Tara B Mar 09 '13 at 22:50
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    First of all, no: not all papers/books/works have been translated; second: not all papers/books/works are written in english; third, "a" foreign language exam? Only one?! In my school it was two foreign languages...and they had to be different from english (also a foreign language), and had to be either russian, german or french...and if you were very lucky, perhaps also italian. Japanese and Chinese seem to be good ones as well, in particular the latter one in the last decades, but...! – DonAntonio Mar 09 '13 at 22:52
  • @TaraB I'm just asking how I should learn a foreign language to be able to read the mathematical works in that language. – user66020 Mar 09 '13 at 22:55
  • A perfect example is a lot of Grothendieck's work has yet to be, uniformly, translated into English. – Alex Youcis Mar 09 '13 at 22:56
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    I don’t know whether it’s still true, but many grad schools used to offer specialized foreign language courses precisely for people in your situation: needing a reading knowledge in a particular discipline, but with no interest in learning the literature or in acquiring a speaking knowledge. – Brian M. Scott Mar 09 '13 at 22:56
  • @BrianM.Scott: Yes, I'm fairly sure such courses are probably usually available when there is a language requirement for PhDs. They may not necessarily be specific to maths, depending on the size of the graduate school, but maybe at least for 'scientists' generally, or something like that. – Tara B Mar 09 '13 at 23:01
  • @user66020: Nevertheless a lot of people might consider this question more appropriate to the academia site (there seem to be plenty of mathematicians there). It sounds like my answer may be not at all what you were looking for? Please let me know if I should remove it. – Tara B Mar 09 '13 at 23:05
  • I recommend French of those languages, if you want to make the least effort. I had 2 years of German in college and still found it easier to read French math than German math. And Russian, well, that's a whole 'nother alphabet. Surprised they don't offer Chinese or Japanese as an option, what is this, 1980s? :) (I realize you weren't asking for recommendations, just tossing that out there.) – Thomas Andrews Mar 09 '13 at 23:05
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    Most papers written in foreign languages will just lack the people competent to understand, let alone translate. – vonbrand Mar 09 '13 at 23:09
  • Also, the definition of "important mathematical works" changes the further you get into mathematics. Only a tiny percentage of mathematics can be called "important mathematical works," and PhD studies is not about studying just the "important works." – Thomas Andrews Mar 09 '13 at 23:10
  • @ThomasAndrews: French would not only be the easiest, but also probably the most useful (depending on one's area of maths of course). Chinese or Japanese would indeed make a lot of sense, except that it's just not reasonable to expect to acquire enough in a short time due to the characters (not as much of a problem for Japanese, but still a problem). Alphabets are not nearly as much of a problem as characters! I suspect the program requirements were generally written in or prior to the 1980s and barely revised since then. =] – Tara B Mar 09 '13 at 23:10
  • @TaraB Yeah, I don't expect too many native-English PhDs to pick up Chinese or Japanese, but it seems like it would be kind to the Japanese or Chinese students that they not have to learn another language :) – Thomas Andrews Mar 09 '13 at 23:12
  • I also wonder how easily mathematics schools can get people with sufficient proficiency either in japanese or chinese to teach them to a bunch of people already sweating to understand what's going on in graduate school... – DonAntonio Mar 09 '13 at 23:13
  • @ThomasAndrews: Oh, I see! Well, that would indeed be reasonable, especially as I know that many Chinese-speaking people who have had most of their higher education in an English-speaking country have trouble reading maths in Chinese, so it's not like it would be no work at all for them to learn to, and may in fact be very useful if they return to work in their home country. – Tara B Mar 09 '13 at 23:14
  • I don't think there's much mathematical research written in Japanese, which would explain why it isn't usually one of the options. I have also yet to encounter any papers written in Chinese. – Zhen Lin Mar 09 '13 at 23:26
  • @ZhenLin: Before my PhD I did some research on modular Lie algebras, and some of the papers I should ideally have looked at were in Chinese. I think there are also papers in Chinese in semigroup theory (my current area). – Tara B Mar 09 '13 at 23:29

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Actually I found that many maths departments in the US don't really still have the foreign language requirement, even though they still claim to on their website. In the UK there is currently no such requirement (I'm not sure if there ever was). I don't know about other countries.

It is certainly increasingly the case that most papers are available in English, but still by no means all (in particular, plenty of maths papers are still published in French and Chinese, and the volume of papers produced these days means that people certainly don't have time to provide quality translations of them all!).

There is no need to become proficient in another language before starting graduate school, and I believe that you will probably be given some kind of help while in graduate school, or you can at least find out what the other students are doing. Where I did my PhD (in the UK), they had courses in "Russian for scientists".

So in summary, I don't think it's really anything to worry about. I believe the exam (in the US) usually consists of translating part of a maths paper, and you are allowed to use a dictionary (although probably not a maths-specific one?).

Could someone more familiar with the US system please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this?

Tara B
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  • Thanks for the helpful information! – user66020 Mar 09 '13 at 23:06
  • At most universities the foreign language exams are designed and administered by a particular professor that is proficient in the language you wish to test in. As such the exact requirements vary widely. One professor told me there was a rumor when he was a grad student of a professor that would pass in you German if you could handle the conversation "Do you speak German?" "Yes, I speak German" in actual German. For my French exam I was given a paper in French that I could translate at home at my own pace. Google translate did most of my work. – zibadawa timmy Nov 17 '13 at 19:03