LWF

Multilingual Space Dictionary

Languages

ARABIC, BULGARIAN, CHINESE, ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN, HINDI, HUNGARIAN, ITALIAN, JAPANESE, POLISH, PORTUGUESE, RUMANIAN, RUSSIAN, SPANISH, TURKISH

Guest Editor

IVÁN ALMÁR, member of IAA, Budapest, Hungary

INTRODUCTION

The Multilingual Terminology Data Base on Astronautics contains about 60,000 items in sixteen languages arranged under English headwords. The program is running under Microsoft Windows 

PREFACE

The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) was established in 1960 to foster the development of astronautics for peaceful purposes through international scientific cooperation, and to recognise individuals who have made scientific achievements and those who are committed to the advancement of aerospace science.

Just as the classical academies were created at the birth of modern science in the seventeenth century, the establishment of the International Academy of Astronautics (in 1960) coincided with the beginning of manned space flight. In the thirty-six years since its establishment, much progress has been achieved in the development of launchers and in the space applications that they make possible. Astronautics is now firmly and permanently in the foreground of scientific and technological progress, influencing the development of individual branches of science and technology.

The Academy membership is divided into four sections: basic sciences, engineering sciences, life sciences and social sciences. Academy work is performed by the members of committees covering all aspects of aerospace sciences and its effects on society. Among them the Multilingual Dictionary Committee prepared a seven language Astronautical Multilingual Dictionary which waspublished in Prague to the memory of Theodore von Kármán in 1970 (scientific editor Prof. L. Pesek).

On October 6, 1986, a new committee was founded within the International Academy of Astronautics in order to compile a Multilingual Terminology Data Base (MTDB) on astronautics. The first meeting of the committee took place on April 8, 1987. The intensive work started in 1988 with the compilation of the first issue of an English-French Basic List (BL) of terms based on existing specialised dictionaries and with the distribution of worksheets among "language coordinators" in different countries. Several hundred specialists from at least 15 countries worked for a couple of years on the preparation of a new multilingual dictionary on astronautics. On January 10, 1990 the first IAA Terminology Workshop in Paris discussed the basic list and various problems of the cooperation. The second Workshop on December 10-13, 1990, and the subsequent meeting of the Steering Committee on March 17-18, 1991, arrived at Issue 4-1 of the BL and formally accepted the "call for tenders" concerning the publication of the dictionary.

On July 24, 1991 the BL Issue 4-1 was mailed to all language coordinators. Taking into account the comments and remarks of the participants the BL was updated in August 1991 (Issue 4-2) and in January 1992 (Issue 4-3). With the help of Aerospatiale the IAA Secretariat published paperback volumes of the "IAA Space Dictionary - Edition Zero" as one of IAA`s contributions to the International Space Year which celebrated the 500th Anniversary of the voyage of Columbus to the New World and the 35 years of the modern space age. Altogether 6 bilingual or trilingual dictionaries were made available in 1992. In the same year, during the World Space Congress in Washington, the first Symposium on Multilingual Astronautical Terminology was organised. The second took place in Graz (1993), the third in Jerusalem (1994) and the fourth in Oslo (1995) during subsequent IAF congresses.

In April 1995 all language coordinators were asked by the Academy to complete their work and deliver the result on floppy disks. As a result of this action, 15 dictionaries have been received with translations of the 3014 English terms of the BL to the following languages:

Bulgarian Chinese French German Hungarian Italian Japanese

D. Mishev Yang Jiachi R. Bensaid H. Strub I. Almár P. Santini H. Saiki, R. Akiba

Polish Portuguese Rumanian Russian Spanish Turkish

M. Subotowicz E. Scalise F. Zaganescu V. Novikov A. Cocca N. Ince

 The name of the responsible language coordinator is given in brackets.

The English BL has been checked by W. Stephens, R. Shelton and M. Williamson.

The Hungarian "The Last Word Foundation" informed the IAA Secretariat in October 1994 that it was ready to publish the complete set of astronautical dictionaries in computer-readable form with state-of-the-art query software. On September 30, 1995 Prof. G. Haerendel, as IAA Vice-President for Publications, and Dr. J.M. Contant, General Secretary of IAA, signed an Agreement with the LWF for the present publication. It includes 91 bilingual dictionaries or, altogether, 182 dictionaries which translate from one language to another. Several revisions of the original dictionaries were required to bring the work to a successful conclusion. These revisions have been initiated by the Guest Editor. The present form of the Multilingual Space Dictionary, however, needs corrections, supplements and, last but not least, definitions. The meaning of several terms is still ambiguous and synonyms are frequently misunderstood because the translation to another language was carried out without definitions. The language coordinators take all responsibility for any errors in their part of the dictionary.

Nevertheless, we hope that this Dictionary will help the work of scientists, engineers, translators and librarians in the field of space science and technology. It intends to facilitate the emergence of a new space terminology as well as the preparation of more complete aerospace dictionaries and encyclopaedias in many languages.

The Editor would like to thank all colleagues contributing to the Dictionary, the language coordinators in particular. This publication would not have been possible without the continual effort of Dr. Jean-Michel Contant in organising the whole endeavour. The precious help of the IAA Secretariat is most gratefully acknowledged. The query software was prepared by M. S. Trutz at The Last Word Foundation.

  Prof. Iván Almár, Guest Editor

 Budapest, March 1998

Technical and Scientific Assistance to the Language Coordinators

German
A. Riester

Hungarian
A. Baj, P.Bencze, E. Both, J. Bozsoky, J. Fejes, G. Gál, J. Gedeon, J. Hideg, I. G. Nagy, G.
Sárhidai, J. Szabó, J. Szemerei

Japanese
Keiken Ninomiya, Kazuyoshi Yajima, Takaji Kuroda, Junichiro Kawaguchi, Tatsuaki Hashimoto

Polish
Zb. Paprotny, M. Subotowicz, P. Wolañski, A.S. Wroñski, St. ¯urkowski, Z. Dmitruk

Spanish
Maria de las Mercedes Esquivel, Hildegarde B. Torres Perrén, Humberto J. Riccardi.

Tuskish
Erdal Panayirci, Kenan Okan, Ali Sabri Þanal, Selçuk Aslan.

LWF