Monolingualism and insularity still seem to be professionally acceptable in some circles in Britain, witness the following comment in a review of the translation into English of a linguistics textbook by the German linguist, Dieter Wunderlich, in the (British) Journal of Linguistics: 'Cambridge University Press is to be commended for taking the trouble to commission a translation of a foreign book on linguistics, and it is to be hoped that more such ventures will make it easier for British readers to find out what their colleagues on the Continent are doing. (Sampson 1980:168) It is difficult to imagine the reverse - a Continental scholar waiting for books from the USA, Britain, or Germany to be translated into Danish, German, etc., in order to find out what their colleagues are doing.
Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism, 1992
