Measures for Fighting Linguistic Injustice: Epistemic Equity and Mitigation

While having English as a shared language within the scientific community contributes to more efficient communication and peer reviews, it also puts non-native speakers in a disadvantaged position. Moreover, we argue that some concepts are inherently untranslatable and, thus, the pluralism of languages can prevent the loss of unique concepts. We use Quine's thesis on the indeterminacy of translation to demonstrate the way the knowledge of marginalized scientists gets lost. We analyze the consequences of linguistic injustice in science and propose two measures for overcoming it: practicing epistemic equity and introducing mitigating agents.