Official position on non-English answers
Since some players have written to us asking if they can provide answers in non-English languages, we have to decided to draw up an official statement regarding the same.
We do recognise that English has been a language of colonisation, as all of our setters are either from India or have a historical connection to India. We also recognise that non-native English speakers may require more time to process and answer in English language. Given these two facts, should we allow answering all or most questions in the native languages of the players?
We have mulled over this question for sometime and have came to these conclusions:
Our questions are not designed to provide any advantage for native speakers of the English language as is evident from the fact that most of our setters and participants are non-native English speakers, and have expressed liking for the questions with its wordplay/tangential hints. See paragraph 4 in section xii here. The fact that native English-speakers are not having special advantage is corroborated by the Public Scoreboard from Season 1. You can look at the top 10 or 20 players.
One of the unwritten rules of our quiz league is that the medium is English language, since that is the only language that is common amongst all the players from across the world, and it is the one used for a bulk of scientific literature in existence. So, we assume that the players can comprehend the questions and provide the answers in English. It logically follows that a person who can fully understand questions in English should also be able to answer the questions in English.
Barring the technical jargon that is an integral part of science and tech, we keep our language as simple as possible, except if it involves some wordplay. So, majority of the questions are easy to understand. We provide boldening and other formatting to help the players understand the questions better.
As this is a timed event, some players may not be able to come up with their answers in English fast enough. In such cases, we see the benefits of accepting answers in non-English languages. However, this should only be done if the answer to the question is not specifically an English language term.
While some mimir leagues like International Culture Challenge (ICC) provide alternate answers in several other languages, such as Mandarin and German, we see this practice a slippery slope to many problems. We will highlight them here:
a. While the readers are all familiar with English, they are likely not familiar with other languages given in the answer keys, which means they are likely not going to understand the pronounciation of those words, even if the pronounciations are given in English. This would lead to more delays in the game, as the reader tries to figure out whether the answer they heard matches with the one given in the key, and it may also include asking the player to type out the answer over the chat.
b. Majority of the participants this season (~57%) are from India. If we are adding alternate answers in Spanish, German, Norwegian, French, Mandarin etc, aren’t we also supposed to add the answers in Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, Bhojpuri, and a multitude of other languages within India? This means that the effort it takes to research and fact check the answers for a set itself can take weeks, and will fill up several pages.
c. Many of the answers that are added as alternate answers in a non-English language are likely not the specific answers. This is because the same words/terms don’t exist in other languages as they were specifically coined in the English language. This is particularly true in the case of academia. As this is a quiz league which deals with science, we are often looking for the academically correct nomenclature.
d. Even if we recommend readers to google to check whether an answer given in a non-English language is correct, most of the top results in the internet today are pure trash. For example, Google’s AI Overview often states misinformation, half-baked information, conspiracies, satire, and even potentially harmful advice as facts. A lot of people see AI Overview when using Google (one of the most common browsers). So, it follows that the answer they receive will also likely be incorrect.
So, we have decided to do this: we will allow answers in non-English languages for questions which doesn’t require a specific word/term as the answer and/or doesn’t specifically ask for an English-language answer. We will provide the answers in several non-English languages for such questions or put in a link to a useful webpage which contains non-English translations. But, such questions will be less as we don’t want the readers to have a hard time, and potentially mess up the points, which can lead to killing a question. We request every player to answer in English as much as possible.