December 2020 - ETSI Hosted 12th ICSSTT

From December 7^th to 11^th, ETSI (Emory-Tibet Science Initiative) hosted the 12^th International Conference on Standardizing Scientific Terms in Tibetan (ICSSTT). Held over five days, scholars, science teachers, and science translators of Tibetan origin from India and the US participated in the 2-hour virtual forum.

The ICSSTT was established in 2009 at Emory University to standardize the Tibetan scientific lexicons developed by the ETSI translation team and thus facilitate a higher standard of translation. It has led to successful standardization of more than 6000 scientific terms, all of which are being used in the ETSI publications, including primers and science textbooks, and in-class lectures.

Due to the pandemic, the conference was held virtually. Over the course of 10-hours, the conferees discussed, debated and finalized 149 terms drawn from physics, biology, neuroscience, pedagogy, research science, and philosophy of science. Tibetan translations for words like ambulocetus, tonicity, enthalpy, social constructivism, chemoattraction, and oligodendrocyte were analyzed for accuracy, elegance, and brevity and will be added to the growing pool of Tibetan scientific lexicon.