Annals of Library Science and Documentation 1984,31(1-2),32-37 TRANSLATION INDEXES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY S.C. SAXENA DES/DOC, Metcalfe House New Delhi-I I 0054 Describes some of the important trans- lished translations done in the United States lation indexes in science and technology pub- and elsewhere. The index has two sections i.e. lished in India and abroad which are useful Register Section and Index Section. TR-I for the the English speaking scientists. Salient Register Section announces new accessions to features and drawbacks of World Transindex, the NTC collection. In the Register Section, Translations Register-Index, BLLD Announce- the translations are arranged under subject ment Bulletin, Aslib Index of Unpublished headings based on COSATI classification Translations, National Index of Translations, scheme. It also covers translations from other etc. have been discussed. sources including the National Technical Infor- mation Services (NTIS). The Index Section of INTRODUCTION TR-I has two parts: journal citations and patent citation. Reports, standards and other senal Translations are a vital source of information publications are included in the journal section. like other primary sources such as patents, re- The arrangement of these publications is alpha- search reports, periodicals, standards, etc. betical by title. Patents are arranged alphabeti- because it is the only source available to check cally by country of origin. The Index Section duplication of knowledge already in existence of TR-I is cumulated semi-annually for all but not accessible due to language barrier. As entries to date in the volume (1). translation of scientific and technical docu- The drawbacks of this index is that it does ments is very expensive and time consuming, not provide subject index for retrospective several networks of translation agencies, hold- search on a specific problem as well as the ing centres and international clearing houses author index for search through author. have been developed in various parts of the world which provide access to the existing 2. BLLD Announcement Bulletin translations through their indexes. It is a monthly bulletin published by the British TRANSLATION INDEXES Library Lending Division (BLLD) Boston spa (U.K.). It lists translations along with British Indexes Published in Foreign Countries report literature, and doctoral theses accepted Some of the translation indexes in the field of by the British Universities [2-3]. All the en- science and technology which are important for tries are arranged under broad subject headings the English speaking world are described below. and within the ultimate subject according -to the type of documents indicated by code. For 1. Translations Register-Index (TR-I) example, D-doctoral theses comes first followed by R-report, T-Translation and TA-Transla- It is a semi-monthly publication being issued tion abridges. At the end, this publication by the National Translations Centre (NTC), provides author index and the address list of Chicago, since 1967. It is the index of unpub- the issuing organizations. 32 Ann Lib Sci Doc TRANSLATION INDEXES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY The index does not provides source. index Commission of the European Communities in and subject index for search on specific topic. Luxemburg and the Scientific and Technical Documentation Centre of the Central National 3. Aslib Index of Unpublished Translations de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. The World Transindex was formed in 1978 Since 1951, Aslib is maintaining a central card by merging the following publications [5-8]. index of English translations from all the langu- ages on various subjects particularly with empha- z. World Index of Scientific Translations sis on science and technology. It is purely a and List of Translations Notified to the location tool for unpublished translations which International Translations Centre; Aslib uses in handling inquiries on translations. n. Transatorn Bulletin; At present, the index contains more than 500,000 entries; the rate of additions of new ZH. Bulle tin des Traduc tions translations is about 10,000 items per year. World Transindex announces about 32,000 Information of translations is collected from translations per year from all the source langu- over 400 sources in Ll.K, and from several ages into all the target languages. It consists overseas organisations. of five sections i.e, references, source index, Bibliographic details of translations of author (personal) index, corporate author periodical articles are filed alphabetically by the index and patentee index. In the references, title of the periodical in the original language. the translations are arranged according to sub- Within each periodical title, details of articles ject headings based on the COSATI system .and are filed chronologically i.e. by year, volume, within the subject heading according to World number and pages. The periodical section Transindex Reference Number. The source and contains .entries for some of the well-known author indexes are cumulated annually, report series and these are filed alphabetically An important' feature of World Transindex by the report code, and then numerically by is that it includes many translations that are the report number, but most reports are filed published in the. selected article journals in- under the author's name in the author section. cluding a substantial number published as part The author section is housed separately of the US Joint Publications Research Service. from the rest of the index. It includes details These are not announced in other translations of translations which is not a periodical article. indexes. The list of periodicals currently trans- patent or standard. If there is no personal lated cover-to-cover is published in its issue author or editor, then it is entered under the number 1 and in the annual index. A micro- issuing organisation. Some items such as decrees fiche edition of World Transindex is also being and safety regulations are filed under the coun- considered. try of origin. The drawback of this index is that it does Patents and standards are filed by country of not provide subject index for retrospective origin. Patents are usually straightforward, being search by specific topics. numbered chronologically. In -the case of patents, sometimes the year of issue is a necess- World Transindex Database ary point of reference. Standards are filed alphabetically by the standards code, then by It is a database of World Transindex which is the number [4] . produced by means of the PASCAL system developed by CNRS., Information announced 4. World Transindex on translations is stored simultaneously in a central database. It permits the production It is published by the International Transla- of profile printouts. It is available for on-line tions Centre, Delf (the Netherlands) jointly access also fS]. Since 1st Sept 1980, this ~ata- with the Directorate General for Scientific and base was made available on-line to users as Technical Inform~tion Management of the file 33 of the Information Retrieval Service Vol 31 Nos 1-2 Mar-ju ne 1984 33 SAXENA (IRS) in Frescati, Italy. This is accessed, from INDEXES PUBI.JSHED IN INDIA U.K. via the Dialtech Service of the Depart- 1) National Index of Translation (NIT) ment of Industry. World Transindex Database holds details of scientific and technical trans- The NIT is a monthly index of unpublished lations collected since 1978 by the International translations done in India, and being brought Translations Centre in the Netherlands and out by the Indian National Scientific Docu- CNRS. As the information is on-line, it is easy mentation Centre (INSOOC), New Delhi since to provide various approaches to informa- January 1981. It lists unpublished English trans- tion such as type of documents, target/source lations of scientific and technical documents. It languages, publication year, tide and subject covers periodic~ monographs/books, patents, index terms [13, 14] . standards and specifications, research reports, manuals, proceedings of seminars and symposia 5. Journals in Translation etc. published in foreign languages. The entries It is a guide to journals containing translations. are arranged under various subject headings It is published jointly by the International derived from Universal Decimal Classification Translations Centre, Delft, the Netherlands and scheme and within each subject heading accord- the British library Lending Division, Bostan ing to their authors [14]. NIT announced spa (U.K.). This publication lists journals which 2500 translated items in 1981. Each entry in are translated cover-to-cover, or selectively, the NIT provides information on author, trans- together with journals which contain transla- lated tide, source language, pages, citation, tions of articles selected from multiple sources. name of translation agency and translation It contains nearly 1000 tides, current and number. ceased and covers all subject fields. In addition Specimen Entry of NIT to the main alphabetical listing of titles, it provides a KWIC index, an index of original UOC No. 546.3.9 titles and a list of publishers and/or distributing Author OKADA Y, SANTO T agents. Translated title New surface treatment of mag- A comfiche version of Journals in Transla- nesium Uap anese ), 8 pp, tion is available from the Instituto de Infor- macion y Documentacion en Ciencia y Tecno- Cation Kinzoku Hyomen Girjutsu 1978, 29(12),661-4. logiya, Joaquin Costa 22, Madrid, Spain [3, 11] . Translation Agency INSDOC, New Delhi Translation No. TN - 23177 6. Index Translationum At present, this publication is providing an It is an annual bibliqgraphy of translated books, author index and permuted subject index as published by the UNESCO since 1948. It supporting indexes. The inclusion of permuted covers only translated books in all the subjects subject index is the unique feature of this publi- from various countries of the World. The entries cation. However, this publication is deficient in are arranged by the name of countries and the following areas: within the country, under ten major divisions (1) NIT does not provide source index i.e.