"Deutsch plus" – A Program for Multilingualism in Teaching and Research (completed)

Objective

In Germany, the use of English for scientific publications and as the language of conferences is common practice especially in the natural and engineering sciences. Nevertheless, styles of thinking and language are so inextricably intertwined that the translation of scholarly and scientific work into another language often proceeds at the cost of significant loss of expression, emphasis and meaning. Via the language used specific patterns of cognition and interpretation and concepts which were coined by the respective culture find their way into processes of academic research and teaching.

Within a context of multilingualism this initiative seeks to attract more international attention to German as a language of science and to lend more weight to research results obtained in the German language. The initiative encompasses four components:

• Calls for proposals concerning multilingual courses of study

• Translation of outstanding German academic books and papers

• Research projects

• Conferences