<p>While I was talking over the phone with an Art History professor in my UG I'm about to start my studies this fall, the first thing he asked me was whether if I speak a foreign language. I told him that I speak Korean(first), Japanese and a bit of French. He said that I should definitely continue studying French, and then perhaps German, also saying "never enough foreign languages."
I also overheard many counsels on prospective HU/SS scholars, by and large, that the "research languages(French and German)" is crucial in further studies.
I'm not really sure, however, how important studying German or French can be. Since most Romance languages look not so enormously different to me, I don't know how can just reading a translation of a French or German paper incur serious disadvantage. Or is it because grad students spend a lot of time reading obscure papers that will probably never be translated?</p>
<p>It’s true that just about anything “important” to the research world will have already been translated into English (yes, there are exceptions, but this is generally speaking). But I suppose in academia, the preference is to go directly from the original source, especially when it’s already a part of the Western canon.</p>
<p>This is a leftover from academia before the internet existed when some texts were only available in a library and translation software wasn’t prevalent. I wouldn’t bother learning a second (or fourth language in your case) if it were me but I guess they make the rules and that is what they want.</p>
<p>There was a time when the diplomatic and research lingua franca was conducted in French and German (before America became a superpower). While it is obvious today to have a strong command of English, in certain fields (most notably History) you must learn other foreign languages if you want to look up archived materials that pre-date the computer revolution.</p>
<p>Original research! Original sources! Some of the best research in history were conducted in foreign language archives- learning foreign languages is one step towards unlocking the massive jigsaw puzzle that hasn’t been put together yet by translators. I mean, there isn’t enough demand for a lot of historical documents and memiors and so forth to be translated… </p>
<p>Also if you’re doing art history, you’d want to be able to read the original sources like the artists’ writings and critic reviews of that period…</p>
<p>secondary sources may be translated into english, but primary sources won’t be. also, much of the secondary literature you’ll be looking at will, even if written in english, quote sources in french or german. i’ve had my share of assigned readings that just randomly veer into 3 paragraphs of german or half a page of french. it happens.</p>
<p>generally, for history, you just need two languages other than english. what those languages are depends upon your particular subfield. as far as i know (and i by no means researched every history grad department), only princeton still requires its students to have near-fluency in french or german, if not both.</p>
<p>if you’re looking to study asian art history, french and german are a little less important, but still helpful to know.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Some people say things like, “In order to read Kant in depth, you must learn German,” even though his work is obviously translated in English in many versions. Do you agree that this notion is valid to Romance language speakers?</p></li>
<li><p>So is this requirement for reading ability in German and French a diminishing trend?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I’m doing sociology, by the way.</p>
<p>yeah. some translations are absolute garbage, even if they’re the most widely printed and sold. always best to read something in the original language whenever possible.</p>
<p>i don’t understand your question about romance language speakers. do you mean would it be easy to read something in french if you spoke spanish? i don’t really know what you’re asking here.</p>
<p>
There is still a great deal of research written in other languages, and not nearly enough of it gets translated into English or published online. In my field, I’d say publications are about 40% English, 35% German, 20% French, and 5% other (Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, and Japanese are the biggest). Some subfields are entirely dominated by German scholars (e.g. Hittitology).</p>
<p>impsuit,</p>
<p>yeah. if you want to fully understand a text originally written in french or spanish or italian, you should be able to read french or spanish or italian. translations miss as much from german to english as they do from french to english or any language to another. if you’re reading a spanish translation in french, maybe the gap isn’t quite as wide, but a translation is only as good as the translator.</p>
<p>i wouldn’t say the ability to read french and german is necessarily a diminishing trend, but rather that the ability to read other languages in addition to one or both of those two is growing.</p>
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<p>I meant that it would be easy to read something in French translated in Spanish if you spoke Spanish, because Spanish and French are very similar and the translator would have to engage in less arbitrariness when translating.</p>
<p>To elaborate, many words in romance languages are etymologically greco-roman, and those words are usually identical among Western countries. For example, “information” is just “information” in French. But many translators, I’ve heard, are still having a hard time trying to translate “德” in Lao-tzu into English. Should it be “power?” “Virtue?” “Morality?” But the truth is, because the system of thought itself is radically different among the two civilizations of the West and ancient China, there is no exact correspondent to this key concept, and therefore you must learn ancient Chinese in order to read Lao-tzu.</p>
<p>Being a lowly undergrad, I’m engaging in much wild speculation here. Please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.</p>
<p>yeah, no. there are fewer decisions to make when translating from french into spanish and vice versa, but there are still definitely differences and choices that have to be made that can affect one’s ability to adequately convey the intended meaning of the original piece. you’re still going to have problems with the translation. but more than that, if a PhD program tells you they want you to speak french, for example, and you say, “well, i speak spanish, maybe i can find translations in spanish that are better than translations in english,” that’s not good enough.</p>
<p>and it’s pretty rare that you’ll find whatever it is you need translated from one romance language to another but not from that romance language to english anyway. i get your point, on why romance language to romance language may be less arbitrary, but again… only as good as the translator. and adcoms will still prefer that you actually speak the languages they’re looking for.</p>
<p>edit: and for what it’s worth, there are lengthy debates over whether “information” is just “information.” i’m not a linguist, but i know that things that would seem common sense to most people are actually pretty hotly contested.</p>
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<p>Also, since the author of secondary literature (in English) will almost always use sources in their original language, not knowing the language makes it diffiuclt to track down and read his/her sources. I’ve experienced such frustrations over the past couple weeks…</p>
<p>As others have covered most of the issues involved with this question, I’ll just add this:</p>
<p>For humanities fields that have a fairly long history (e.g. Art History and my field, Classics) you’ll find that there is an enourmous amount of material, some critical to the field, some outdated, and inevitably, some that you won’t be able to live without when doing your thesis research, that has been written in some language other than English. In these fields that’s very often French or German. There are hundreds of “Festschrift” type documents (often with articles in 3 or 4 different languages), journals, theses, etc. all of which you’ll need at some time or other. Then there is the unpublished material - excavation logs (some extending for decades), museum documents, archival material documenting exhibitions, restorations, etc. We’re talking about literally centuries of published (and un-) work. Most of it will never be digitized, let alone translated.</p>
<p>And of course once you begin to get into the literature (also known as “on day one”) you’ll find that each language has a special technical vocabulary for your field, virtually none of which is covered in German/French/Italian 101/102. </p>
<p>If anything, the ability to read the research languages is becoming an even more “up front” requirement in humanities fields. I know from my own “application follies” that several top programs in Classics & Classical Archaeology make their first cut of otherwise qualified applicants based on the applicants’ knowledge of modern research languages: no modern language = no admission.</p>
<p>So what level of ability should I reach in terms of college courses during UG? Intermediate? 300? 400?</p>
<p>intermediate level should be fine for the most part. find an academic article written in the foreign language, and give yourself two hours and a big dictionary to translate 1 page from it. have someone fluent in the language grade your translation. if you got the gist of what the page was about with no major errors, then your foreign language is fine in terms of gaining entrance into most PhD programs. you may need to continue your language work once in grad school, but that level of proficiency is usually sufficient for admission.</p>
<p>in history programs, there are a few ways to prove your language knowledge once you’re admitted. some involve these translation exams, some involve proof of 300-level coursework in the language, and some involve writing research papers that make sufficient use of sources in foreign languages. it’s probably different for other programs, but i don’t have any firsthand knowledge of how sociology programs test language skills. it varies by school, but generally if you can get a B+ or better in a 3rd year language course, that’s adequate.</p>
<p>Professor X should be able to give some great advice on this topic if he notices this …</p>
<p>Well, since you asked… :)</p>
<p>WilliamC’s post is excellent, as usual. Doctoral-level research in the humanities simply demands that one be able to access secondary materials in French and German. </p>
<p>Depending upon one’s particular subfield, other languages are also obviously necessary, but French and German are basic and indispensible research tools. </p>
<p>In terms of graduate admissions, a good course in French for Reading or German for Reading should suffice. These “for reading” classes are much preferred to conversational language study, but if conversational language study is all that is available, intermediate level should be adequate for admission purposes. Strange_Light’s post explains this well. </p>
<p>And just for your amusement and/or edification, here’s a recent example of a “Thank goodness my doctoral program required reading knowledge of German” moment:</p>
<p>Last year, while doing research for a book, I read considerable amounts of primary and secondary materials in French. I also read some primary source materials in Latin. Not unexpected. Not much secondary literature in my particular subfield is in German, so I don’t use German often at all. However…</p>
<p>After presenting on my preliminary research at a conference, I was solicited for an article by a German journal. I was allowed to write the article in English, but I then had to review the article after it was translated into German by the journal’s staff. Had I not been able to read German, some very unfortunate errors would have crept into my work via that translation, and my scholarly reputation among readers of that journal would have suffered.</p>
<p>To the OP: In Art History, French and German (and often, Italian) are necessary research languages. There’s no way around it, nor should there be. </p>
<p>And just for clarity’s sake, German is not a Romance language.</p>
<p>How about for a field such as American History? Is there typically research involved requiring knowledge of foreign languages? I’m assuming French or Spanish would be the logical choices, especially for the 18th century. But I guess if I knew I wouldn’t be asking…</p>
<p>For American History, I believe French, Spanish and German will suffice. If you’re studying Asian-American history, include Japanese/Chinese/Korean.</p>