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> Really? I don't think there was ever much translation. Look at my Stack Exchange post. I know from the "Consolidated Index of Translations into English" that

> Really? I don't think there was ever much translation. Look at my Stack Exchange post. I know from the "Consolidated Index of Translations into English" that there were ad-hoc English translations of very roughly 300,000 articles produced from 1953 to 1986 (that were reported to the index). That's ignoring the cover-to-cover translation journals too. This isn't everything, but it's a lot. In my experience the ad-hoc translations tended to pick the most important articles that the cover-to-cover translation journals missed.

bsder 7y ago
But wasn't that basically compiled by the US intelligence agencies? So, those translations are a unique artifact of the Cold War, no? It appears that there was never any drive for translation from the scientific side.
- btrettel 7y ago
  While I think the Cold War increased interested in translations, I don't think US intelligence agencies were the driving force. If I had to guess I'd say that the driving force appears to have been scientific interest in what "the other side" was doing. That combined with the fact that English wasn't the lingua franca of science then as far as I'm aware. The index I mentioned was produced by the Special Libraries Association, which is an organization that still exists today and has no link to US intelligence as far as I'm aware. The CIA has their own public translations index circa the 1960s (with a similar name) but that largely duplicates this one, and as far as I'm aware rarely mentions actual CIA translations. The most common type of translation listed is the TT series. The TT series had nothing to do with intelligence agencies as far as I'm aware. Looks like it was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Special Libraries Association: https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/trs/trstt.html https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/trs/trstt.html The UK translations series I've seen were entirely motivated by scientific interest. In fact, I recall that while looking through a UK translations index I found a form to request a translation. Seems to have been addressed to scientists as intelligence agencies presumably would have the resources to translate articles in-house. Also, the large number of cover-to-cover translation journals, many of which continue today, would suggest there is appreciable scientific interest in translations.

bsder 7y ago

But wasn't that basically compiled by the US intelligence agencies? So, those translations are a unique artifact of the Cold War, no? It appears that there was never any drive for translation from the scientific side.

btrettel 7y ago
While I think the Cold War increased interested in translations, I don't think US intelligence agencies were the driving force. If I had to guess I'd say that the driving force appears to have been scientific interest in what "the other side" was doing. That combined with the fact that English wasn't the lingua franca of science then as far as I'm aware. The index I mentioned was produced by the Special Libraries Association, which is an organization that still exists today and has no link to US intelligence as far as I'm aware. The CIA has their own public translations index circa the 1960s (with a similar name) but that largely duplicates this one, and as far as I'm aware rarely mentions actual CIA translations. The most common type of translation listed is the TT series. The TT series had nothing to do with intelligence agencies as far as I'm aware. Looks like it was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Special Libraries Association: https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/trs/trstt.html https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/trs/trstt.html The UK translations series I've seen were entirely motivated by scientific interest. In fact, I recall that while looking through a UK translations index I found a form to request a translation. Seems to have been addressed to scientists as intelligence agencies presumably would have the resources to translate articles in-house. Also, the large number of cover-to-cover translation journals, many of which continue today, would suggest there is appreciable scientific interest in translations.