n8
Class (528 instead of 526), which is fairly up-to-date, to adapt the
documentation in geodesy (surveying) to the possibilities of mechan
ised information retrieval, it will be necessary to create a thesaurus.
At the Zentralstelle für Internationale Dokumentation der Geodae-
sie (Dresden, East Germany), mentioned under paragraph 2.10.1,
preparations for such a thesaurus have already been made. Dr.
Paul, the leader of this documentation centre has definite ideas
about this subject.
4. Language and Multi-Lingual Dictionaries
4.1 International Dictionaries
4.1.1 Scientific and technical publications on any given subject
are potentially of value to those interested in that subject anywhere
in the world. In a survey carried out by UNESCO a random sample
of 59 periodicals concerned with the fields of mathematics, astro
nomy, geodesy, surveying, and physics, contained 24 in English,
9 in French, 10 in German, and 5 in Russian or other languages
using the Cyrillic script. In the fields of engineering, communications
and transport, building, architecture, and town planning, of 122
periodicals, 65 were in English, 16 in French, 20 in German, 6 in
Italian, 4 in Spanish, and 3 in Russian and other Cyrillic languages.
In order to make this information accessible, scientists have either
to learn to read foreign languages, or employ competent persons
to do the work for them. Many scientists of course read foreign
languages and in a UNESCO publication entitled 'Documentation
and Terminology of Science (1957), an assessment of the number
of scientists capable of reading articles in the principal languages
was made. One of the more startling conclusions reached was that
there may be more Russians who can read scientific German, than
Germans who can read scientific Russian, and twice as many Rus
sians who can read scientific French, than Frenchmen who can read
scientific Russian. This book also contains a diagram showing the
amount of scientific literature published in certain languages
against the number of scientists who are capable of reading these
languages. All the remaining space in the diagram is shaded to
indicate the proportion of the world's scientific literature which
runs to waste unless it is translated from the language of origin.
It is concluded that at least 50 per cent of scientific literature is
in languages which more than half the world's scientists cannot
read. Nearly two-thirds of engineering literature appears in English,
but more than two-thirds of the world's professional engineers
cannot read English, and a still larger proportion of English-reading
engineers cannot read scientific literature in other languages.
Leaving qualitative differences aside, the greater part of what
is published is inaccessible to most of those who could benefit
from it. Four remedies are proposed by UNESCO: 1. translations;
2. increasing the proportion of scientists able to read foreign lan-
