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International delegates are also submitting papers to journals, presenting and participating at conferences that are predominantly in English. Papers, guidelines, and policies are published in several languages, such as Japanese, Italian, French, German, English, Korean, Chinese and Spanish. This is currently the case in the fields of fluvial geomorphology and steep creek hazard mitigation since several countries are active in these domains. Moreover, writers waste valuable time when they try to find proper technical terms in a different language. Translations of technical papers and of presentations are particularly complicated and troublesome. Differences in the usage of technical terms and their varying definitions in different regions of the world may constrain the transfer of knowledge, for example in guidelines.
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The exchange of information between colleagues of different countries who work on homologous projects or in similar fields requires a common technical vocabulary.
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Abstract Geoscientists, researchers and engineers study and work on similar projects all over the world.
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