Ĉu vi scias kiel funkcias interfero? Priskribi la esencajn konceptojn por ĉi tiu grava optika efiko postulas precizan kaj klaran lingvon!
Did you get that? Perhaps not on the first read, but after checking with Google Translate, you discover that these sentences are written in Esperanto—humanity’s most successful planned language. Invented in 1889 by Ludwig Zamenhof, Esperanto seeks to preserve cultural diversity while overcoming misunderstandings and conflicts in communication. Esperanto today has 2 million speakers, including denaskaj esperantistoj—people who learned it as children as their first language in multilingual households. Fluent speakers, however, are spread so thinly over the globe that the language is only used when they gather in local clubs, on the internet, or at the annual Universala Kongreso, which in 2024 attracted more than 1,000 enthusiasts to Arusha, Tanzania, to discuss literature, music, science, and international cooperation. If you are curious what Esperanto sounds like, check out Inkubo, a feature film entirely in Esperanto, released in 1966. All the actors, including William Shatner (yes! Captain Kirk!), mastered the language for the movie.
I learned Esperanto many years ago, following in the footsteps of my grandfather, who was an avid Esperantist who believed strongly in its mission. It is a fascinating language that can be learned in less than one-tenth the time of natural languages like English, yet is fully capable of expressing the most complex thoughts, including detailed cultural and scientific ideas, using a consistent and unchanging grammar that can be written on just two pages. Think of it as a kind of metric system for language. Studying Esperanto is an intriguing way to explore efficient and accurate communication. It also highlights that efficiency isn’t the only important factor in sharing ideas, or we would all be speaking Esperanto at SPIE conferences.
Let’s say that you have worked on your PhD for four years’ worth of long hours and advanced research, and now you have exactly 12 minutes to tell everyone about it at a conference. Efficiency is definitely part of the recipe for success! But just as important is storytelling, providing context, motivating your audience, articulating arguments using simplified mathematics, and showing attractive and readily apprehensible images and graphical data. Unless you are presenting at a Universala Kongreso, you also need to account for a linguistically diverse audience that might not understand your high-speed colloquial speech, or your humorous turn of phrase that only makes sense in your culture.
How to achieve the simultaneous goals of efficient and effective communication internationally is a continuous project for speakers, conference organizers, and editors, especially in a world where media and modern methods of communication are rapidly evolving. At SPIE, we provide resources and training in professional communication for writing papers, presenting your work to a live audience, and even the latest strategies for social media posts. Many SPIE conferences include professional development events on these topics, and Members can peruse the archives of Photonics Focus for dozens of articles about scientific communication: spie.org/sciencecommunication.
Peter de Groot
2025 SPIE President
