eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya) (08/17/85)
During several recent meetings in Santa Clara of ACM / IEEE
SIGs and Committees, the issue of the translating technical
documents from the original Japanese has popped up. One
journal was quoted as saying that only 20% of the Japanese
technical publications are translated into English. We are
finding this is a problem not only in computers and electronics,
but thermonuclear physics, chemistry, aeronautics and other fields.
We are fortunate to have several staff members who are Japanese
and even contribute to Japanese publications such as `bit.'
Are people's needs for translation significant? I know companies such
as HP have a sizeable overseas staffs.
Creating a news group could only serve to inform people about where
translation services are available. Unfortunately, it is difficult
to transfer Japanese character sets. I am aware of the NBS effort
to get interested parties together. Perhaps, we could get members of the
net with Japanese experience to monitor publications and inform
the community along the lines of net.mag when ever significant Japanese
papers appear, then perhaps groups of net members could chip in to get
papers translated. Any interest? Perhaps similar publications monitors
for the European non-English journals might appear?
--eugene miya
NASA Ames Research Center
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