25 Referral, Document Delivery and Translation Services
C M Anand
I. Objectives
After studying this module the learner will be able to:
• Define referral, document delivery and translation services;
• Know the importance of referral service and how a library can provide this service;
• Know the need and importance of document delivery service (DDS):
• Describe the impact of information technology on the efficiency of DDS;
• Define Electronic Document Delivery Systems (EDDS);
• Know important EDDS operating in the world;
• Describe problems associated with DDS;
• Explain the need and importance of translation services;
• Define Machine Translation Systems; and
• Know the role of library in procuring the translations of the required documents for the users
II. Learning Outcome
After studying this module, you will be able to learn the details of Referral, Document Delivery and Translation Services in libraries. Referral, document delivery and translation services are responsive services, which are provided by the libraries when requested by the library users. You will be informed that referral service is concerned with directing the user with specific needs to the sources available outside the library. The sources may be a reputable person, an organization or an agency, which would fulfil information needs of the users. Document delivery service deals with the supply of document, either original or its copy, in print or in electronic form, to the user on demand. Translation service deals with translation of the foreign language documents into the target language as per user’s demand.
III. Module Structure
1. Introduction
2. Referral Service
2.1 Need and Purpose of Referral Service
2.2 Provision of Referral Service
2.2.1 Resource File
2.2.2 Question/Answer Component
2.2.3 Clarification, Follow-up and Assistance
3. Document Delivery Service (DDS)
3.1 Growth and Development
3.1.1 Increase in Demand
3.1.2 Document Supply Centres
3.1.3 Impact of Technology
3.1.4 Electronic Document Delivery Systems
3.1.5 Emergence of E-Journal Consortia
3.2 Document Supply Centres- Examples
3.2.1 Document Copy Supply Service of NISCAIR (DCSS)
3.2.2 British Library Document Supply Service (BLDSS)
3.2.3 Document Delivery Service of National Library of Australia
3.3 Electronic Document Delivery Systems (EDDS) – Examples
3.3.1 Document Delivery Service from Infotrieve Inc.
3.3.2 Inter Library Loan Service of Online Computer Library Centre (OCLC)
3.3.3 DOCLINE System: Inter Library Loan System of National Library of Medicine, USA
3.3.4 Document Delivery Service from E-journal Publishers
3.4 Problems of DDS
3.4.1 Role of International Organizations
4. Translation Services
4.1 Translation Process and Translation Methods
4.2 Translation Services in Science and Technology
4.2.1 International Translation Centre (1975-1997) (formerly European Translation Centre)
4.2.2 Index Translationum (1932+)
4.3 Translation Services in India
4.3.1 NISCAIR Foreign Language Service
4.3.2 Translation Activities in Humanities and Social Sciences in India
4.4 Machine Translation
4.4.1 MT Systems for Mainframe, Personal Computers (PC) and Internet
4.4.2 Machine Translation Research in India
4.5 Translation Services from MT Systems
4.6 Role of Libraries/Information Organisations in Translation Service
5. Summary
6. References
1. Introduction
As you are aware, the indexing and abstracting periodicals, current awareness services (CAS) as well as SDI services bring together recently published literature in specific subjects scattered over wide range of primary sources (such as primary periodicals, research reports, dissertations, conference papers, etc.). These services select the relevant items, arrange them in helpful sequence and bring to the notice of library users at regular intervals. These services list each item with full bibliographical details, so that original documents may be identified and located.
Such services keep users informed of the latest publications in their subject, help them to overcome language barrier and solve their research problem, if any. At present, indexing and abstracting periodicals, as well as CAS are published in all the subject areas and are now available in machine readable form. These are available as CD-ROM products or for online searching on the Internet, as bibliographical databases.
Availability and easy access to the lists of recently published books, online bibliographic databases, and current awareness services on the Internet, generate lot of requests from the library users for the procurement of the original document which may be a book, or a periodical article, a dissertation or a conference paper or any other document. At times, if original item is in another language, the translation for the same is requested by the library users.
The above requests from the users initiate the library to procure the requested documents, translate the requisite documents or refer the users to the sources where the requested items are available. All these services are responsive services, as these are provided in response to the requests from the users. The referral service, document delivery service and translation service, therefore, come under the category of responsive services.
In this module, you will learn about referral service, document delivery service and translation service.
2. Referral Service
Whenever the information required by the library user is either not available in the library or is not within the subject expertise of a particular library, then the users are usually directed to sources outside the library, where they would find the required information. Outside source may be a person and/or an organization or an agency. Such service is called referral service. Referral service does not provide users with the document or information needed by them, but directs them to sources of information where required document or information would be available.
Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science defines referral service as ‘A type of reference transaction in which patrons with an information need are directed to a reputable person or agency outside the library.’
The referral service is also known as ‘information and referral service (I&R)’. The Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science defines this service as “A service available at no charge, usually from a public library or public service agency, providing contact information about other organizations, and individuals qualified to offer specific information and services, both free and fee based, usually within the local community.” Another definition of I&R by Robert Croneberger and Carolyn Luck is “The active process of linking a person with a need or problem with a service which will meet the need and solve the problem”. This type of service provides detailed information, including contact information, mailing address where a person can go and receive the required help.
2.1 Need and Purpose of Referral Service
No library can hold all the material available in all the subjects of the interest of their users, but library has the responsibility to meet all the demands of their users. The best alternative is to refer the users to the requisite person, place or sources. The referral service offered by the libraries fulfils this responsibility.
Earlier the purpose of referral service, particularly in public libraries, was to offer the users with current information and data on local community services which will help them with health, rent, consumer, legal and similar problems. Later libraries started providing information on sources of employment. For providing referral service, libraries often used or compiled directories of social service organizations. Now, even in a traditional library, to provide I&R service, it is common to:
• call individual experts, including anyone from a local professor to a leader in a local special-interest group, for assistance;
• provide pamphlets, booklists, etc. to users, which give users information on topics ranging from occupation to local housing regulations; and
• provide a place in which active groups in the community may identify as an information clearing house. (William A. Katz).
2.2 Provision of Referral Service
Referral service has several components and these components are usually present in the ‘linking’ process. However these components are not mutually exclusive. The components are:
• The Resource File
• The Question/Answer Component
• A clarification, follow-up and Assistance
2.2.1 Resource File
To provide this service, a library creates a resource file. A resource file is a directory listing names, addresses and contact details of the agencies, organizations as well as persons, for referral when required. The resource file is kept up-to-date by adding new agencies and removing the names of agencies that are no longer active. If resource file is computerized, it is easier to edit, add, or delete a record.
2.2.2 Question/Answer Component
The question/answer component can occur in three different ways, viz. Simple, Simple Referral, and Complex Referral.
Simple- When user asks a direct question about the name of an agency providing particular service outside the library and librarian provides the required information.
Simple Referral-When user approaches the librarian with a query and after discussing and clarifying the query, the librarian refers or directs the user to an appropriate source outside the library, it is simple referral.
Complex referral occurs when the librarian himself contacts the service provider outside the library for the user, instead of directing the user to the service centre.
2.2.3 Clarification, Follow-up and Assistance
Here librarian tries to clarify the query in order to determine if there are needs other than those expressed by the user directly. While referring the user to an outside agency, librarian may apprise the user about the agency and its services. In case user has problems in getting assistance from outside agency, the librarian may assist the user by contacting the agency and following up later, to find if user has received the required service or not. Assistance provided may also be in the form of providing transportation to the agency, arranging meeting with the service provider, etc.
It has been observed that libraries providing referral service to their users are not able to achieve satisfaction level to the extent they achieve with other services. Because there are problems associated with referral service. Firstly, the library staffs have additional responsibility to identify outside service agencies, keeping in view the users requirements, and compile the resource file. Maintaining and updating the resource file is another responsibility. Finally referring the users to outside service agencies where they do not have any direct control is another limitation of referral service. Another problem is the attitude of the librarians. They are trained to use bibliographical tools and techniques to find information, so they feel comfortable promoting books or electronic resources rather than promoting themselves as source of information. Librarians should try to break this attitude and promote themselves as best source of information.
In a study by Childers(1979), it was found that 68% of the public libraries with I&R service provide “the enquirer with the asked for information on outside resources, such as phone number, addresses, contact persons, etc. without further probing.” Childers also found that more complex type of reference search was done by 54% of the libraries. It was found that of all the libraries in the study, only 13% “provide a bonafide I&R service in that they actively help the user make contact with an outside resource by making an appointment, calling an agency, etc.”
3. Document Delivery Service (DDS)
The document delivery service also known as document supply service, is concerned with the supply of document, either original or its copy, in print or in electronic form, to the user on demand.
Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science defines DDS as “Provision of published or unpublished documents in hardcopy, microform, or digital format, usually, for a fixed fee upon request.”
The DDS is culminating point of all access services. Most of the other information services like CAS, Indexing and abstracting services, literature search services, etc. inform the users about currently published sources of information in their area of interest, whereas DDS actually locates the original document and supplies it to the user. DDS is one of the most important services, as value and importance of other services is directly dependent upon efficiency of this service. For example, if a user alerted by a current awareness service, requires an original document listed in the service and efforts are not made to procure and supply the document to the user in time, the CAS will have no value for him. The DDS thus, adds value to other information services.
3.1 Growth and Development
Earlier, the DDS was limited to the lending of required documents to the user for a specified period of time by the library from its own collection and if not available within the library, then borrowing it from other libraries on interlibrary loan and lending it to the user. With the introduction of xerography in mid 1950s and large scale use of photocopiers in libraries by 1970s, the DDS was not just confined to the lending of documents, but documents could be duplicated and permanently given to the users. The libraries started using photocopiers to supply copies of the required documents, such as journal article or a few pages of books for DDS purposes.
3.1.1 Increase in Demand
The demand for DDS kept on increasing with increase in number of researchers primarily in the areas of science and technology. This was followed by other disciplines. There were many other factors which resulted in increase in demand for DDS from 1960s onwards. For example, exponential growth of published literature, increase in number of users and availability of online and CD-ROM bibliographic databases providing easy and timely access to published information, resulted in great demand for the original documents. On the other hand, the declining library budgets, increasing costs of the publications, made it difficult for the libraries to fulfil the growing demands of their users. Many libraries started relying on other libraries to meet increased information needs of their users. Over the years, what was earlier known as inter- library loan grew into a planned system of library cooperation. To facilitate such cooperation, a unified list of Union Catalogues was compiled. At the same time, producers of bibliographic databases started offering DDS for the bibliographical references listed in their databases.
However, library cooperation systems had their own limitations, such as problems of updating the union catalogue, extra inter-lending burden on large libraries and withdrawal of some participating libraries. To overcome these problems, need for specialized document supply centres, exclusively devoted to the document delivery service was felt.
3.1.2 Document Supply Centres
In response to the need for specialized document supply centres, many nationalized centres came up in the world offering DDS service in planned manner. Some of the document supply centres operating in the world are British Library Document Supply Service (BLDSS) U.K.; National Library of Medicine, USA; National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), New Delhi, India; Document Delivery Service of National Library of Australia; and Document Delivery Service of INFLIBNET, Ahmadabad, India. These centres offer DDS drawing upon the resources ranging from comprehensive centralized collection to decentralized collection.
3.1.3 Impact of Technology
The advent of computers, scanners and telecommunication technologies in 1980s made it possible to store the documents in electronic form and transfer the same electronically anywhere via telecommunication networks almost instantly. Many libraries and information centres started using this technology to deliver the documents. This greatly increased the speed of the service. The availability of full-text e-journals and e-books on the Internet and emergence of World Wide Web in 1990s had most significant impact on the DDS. The scope of DDS expanded beyond the traditional libraries and document delivery centres. The database producers, e-journal publishers, commercial online vendors, commercial e-journal service providers and aggregators also started delivering documents electronically.
3.1.4 Electronic Document Delivery Systems
The systems employing electronic technology for receipt of requests and supply of documents electronically over telecommunication networks are called Electronic Document Delivery Systems (EDDS). This technology uses series of devices that scan paper copy of the document, capture the document image and store it in digital format. The digital copy of the document is sent electronically via e-mail, fax or other document delivery software like “Ariel” to the requester.
Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science defines Electronic Document Delivery as “The transfer of information traditionally recorded in physical medium (print, videotape, sound recording, etc.) to the user electronically via e-mail or World Wide Web. The libraries employ digital technology to deliver the information contained in the documents and files placed on reserve and requested via inter library loan.” (http://www.abc.clio.com/ODLIS/odlis_A.aspx)
3.1.5 Emergence of E-Journal Consortia
At present most of the scholarly peer reviewed journal are available in print as well in electronic form. E-journals, with built in search facilities, multimedia capability and remote access, are in great demand by the library users. But ever shrinking budget of the libraries and exponential growth of e-publications and their escalating cost are making it difficult for individual library to meet this demand. So, many libraries are joining to form a consortium for subscription to e- journals. With Internet access to e-journal, a user can search and browse table of content of a journal, view abstract of the selected article and if desired can browse and download the full-text article instantaneously on his/her computer. Consortium based subscription to e-journals and electronic full text databases are picking up by libraries in India. At present over 10 national level consortia are operating in the country. Some of them are INDEST-AICTE Consortium, UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, and National Knowledge Resource Consortium of e-resources of CSIR and DST. This has resulted in lesser demand for printed journal articles.
Because of e-Journal consortia, most of the document supply centres are witnessing decrease in demand for delivery of documents, particularly of journal articles.
3.2 Document Supply Centres- Examples
3.2.1 Document Copy Supply Service of NISCAIR (DCSS)
NISCAIR (erstwhile INSDOC) provides copies of articles from Indian and foreign journals, as well as patents and standards on request. The service is based on decentralized collection of resources held in major libraries in India including its own library, i.e. National Science Library. The requests are received by mail, fax or e-mail. The location of the required document is identified using the database of NUCSSI (National Union Catalogue of Scientific Serials in India). NUCSSI database has information on 45,541 periodical titles held by 464 major libraries in the country. Firstly the requests are met from NISCAIR’s own collection of resources, then from Delhi based libraries and if not available, then from libraries from India or from foreign countries. NISCAIR provides following services under DCSS:
a. Content, Abstracts and Photocopy Service (CAPS)
This is another form of document supply service offered by NISCAIR. In CAPS service, the subscribers receive table of contents of selected journals (15 titles for individual subscriber and 30 titles for institutional subscriber) every month from a list of 7000 Indian and foreign periodicals pertaining to different disciplines. The service is available to subscribers on paper, diskette or through e-mail. On browsing the contents, the subscriber can place order for abstract or full text of desired article through DCSS of NISCAIR. NISCAIR also provides on the spot photocopies of articles from its own collection to the students or researchers who visit the library.
b. NISCAIR Online Periodicals Repository (NOPR)
NOPR provides free access to full-text articles from 18 research periodicals published by NISCAIR. The Repository provides access to over 25,870 articles. One can search the database by periodical title, article title, authors, keywords and date of publication.
c. National Knowledge Resource Consortium (NKRC of e-Resources)
The NKRC, established in the year 2009, is a network of libraries and information centres of 39 CSIR and 24 DST institutes. NKRC provides online access to 5000+ full-text e-journals from 29 major international publishers, and many important citation and bibliographic databases and standards like Web of Science, Derwent Information Index, Scifinder, ASTM and Indian Standards. Apart from licensed e-resources, NKRC also provides users with access to over 2000 open access e-journals.The access is provided on 24/7 basis. The scientists can search, browse and download full text article on their computers sitting remotely.
d. Walk-in-User Facility
Researchers and scholars, who visit any of the CSIR Laboratory, institute or library, are permitted to use these e-resources for scholarly purposes. They can access, browse, download and print any article from the e-resources of the consortium through the computer terminal placed in the library free of charge.
3.2.2 British Library Document Supply Service (BLDSS)
British Library has world’s largest collection including 150 million items devoted to provision of remote document delivery. It holds journals (260,000 titles), books (15million), conferences, reports, patents (60 million), theses, official publications, music scores and images. The collection covers every aspect of science, technology, medicine and human knowledge in many languages. BLDSS offers following services from its collection:
a. British Library Online Ordering and Administration System
British Library Online Ordering and Administration System provide more efficient, higher quality document supply service, with the exception of premium services. One can search the collection online and place order for the specific document. The digital copy of the document is delivered electronically on the remote computer. Payment options available are monthly in- voicing, a deposit account and pay-as-you-go option. Pay as-you-go customers are able to buy document sussing a credit card or debit card.
b. British Library Publishers Digitization Service
Through this service, publishers of scholarly journals can get a digital copy of their back volumes of printed journals, which are available in British Library collection.
c. British Library Loan Service
About 3 million English language books are available for loan to both commercial and non- commercial organizations around the world. Loan service is offered to organizations and not to individuals.
d. British Library Reprints
BL supplies original quality reprints of articles directly from the publishers for internal training or for dissemination to the customers at events and exhibitions.
e. Electronic Theses Online Service (ETHOS)
ETHOS provides online access to over 250,000 U.K. theses. One can search the database free and order for full-text on payment basis.
3.2.3 Document Delivery Service of National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia (NLA) is playing a major role in Australian inter library loan and document delivery service. NLA provides inter library loan and document delivery service from its own comprehensive collection and facilitates access to the collection of other libraries in Australia and around the world. “Copies Direct Service” of National Library of Australia is fast and inexpensive service to get copies of articles, chapters of books, photographs, picture, maps, manuscripts, etc. from online library catalogue. Copy of the item requested by the user can be delivered in three ways, viz. i) the copy is scanned and posted to NLA website in PDF format and user is informed via e-mail with a link and password to the web side to allow him to pick up the copy ; ii) copy can be printed and sent by post, or iii) can be picked up by the requester from NLA.
3.3 Electronic Document Delivery Systems (EDDS) – Examples
EDDS systems provide immediate access to the needed information. In such systems, the request may be received by telephone, e-mail, Fax or online. The document is sent electronically via e- mail, or other document delivery software like Ariel. EDDS can provide immediate access to the material. Apart from speed, it is convenient to access the information for which EDDS are preferred over traditional document delivery methods.
Ariel Interlibrary Loan Software is an Internet document transmission system owned and supported by Infotrieve Inc. It is used by a large number of libraries around the world for electronic document delivery purposes. Ariel software permits user to scan, store, transmit, and print material. With Ariel software, an article in a print journal can be scanned into PC and image transmitted over the Internet to other Ariel workstations anywhere in the world.
3.3.1 Document Delivery Service from Infotrieve Inc.
Infotrieve Inc. is one of the leading electronic document delivery service providers to organizations around the world. Infotrieve makes electronic delivery methods available to individuals, organizations, and corporate customers. The Infotrieve has proprietary database of more than 60 million citations aggregated from partnership with libraries and publishers around the world, including NRC-CISTI Canadian National Science Library Collection and Infortrieve’s own STM library of managed print collection. Infotrieve delivers one million documents annually and more than 70% are supplied electronically in five minutes or less.
3.3.2 Inter Library Loan Service of Online Computer Library Centre (OCLC)
The Inter-Library Loan Service of OCLC is world’s largest online computerized ILL service used by thousands of libraries, resource centres and document suppliers around the world. OCLC WorldShare Inter Library Loan system is fully automatic networked borrowing and lending system. The new Worldshare Interlibrary Loan Service replaces the current WorldCat Resource Sharing Service. This service will be fully operational from May 19, 2014. It will transform traditional interlibrary loan into a fulfillment service that supports evolving workflow changes such as purchasing needed items instead of borrowing them. This positions interlibrary loan as many of the options a library can offer to suit library policies and users need. WorldShare platform supports new delivery features that will incorporate with other applications. This includes display of cost of lending an item and display of the items’ availability in a library’s integrated library system.
3.3.3 DOCLINE System: Inter Library Loan System of National Library of Medicine, USA
DOCLINE is an automated inter library loan (ILL) request, routing order and referral system. Purpose of the system is to provide efficient document delivery service among libraries in National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM). The system provides efficient document delivery service by linking the holdings of member libraries and routing the ILL requests quickly throughout the network. If a request is received and not acted upon within three working days, the DOCLINE automatically routes the requests to another potential lender.
3.3.4 Document Delivery Service from E-journal Publishers
Publishers like Springer, Elsevier, Emerald, etc. provide online access to their full text e-journals, e-books, and e-reference collection. Most of these publishers offer free access to table of contents and abstracts of articles of their e-journals. Subscribers can search and download full- text article on their desktop, while non-subscribers can download articles or chapters from books on pay-per-view basis.
3.4 Problems of DDS
Copyright issues, inter-library lending (ILL) at national and international level, incompatibility of ILL protocols for document delivery purposes and restriction imposed on the storage and delivery of documents electronically by publishers are some of the problems faced by DDS operators.
The Indian Copyright Act is compliant with most of the International Conventions and Treaties in the field of copyright. These International conventions acknowledge the exclusive rights of authors or publishers over their literary work, but at the same time permit taking of a single copy of the document for research and educational purposes for the benefit of the society. However, copyright laws in relation to electronic material are ambiguous and are continuously changing. To prevent unauthorized use and exploitation of electronic material, most of the publishers are selling their e-publications under license agreement. The license agreements have rigid clauses, which impose number of restrictions on the use of e-material by the library, including its use for document delivery purposes.
3.4.1 Role of International Organizations
These problems are being discussed at international level and many international agencies are involved in finding solutions to these problems. Some of the organizations working on these issues are discussed in the subsequent sections.
i. IFLA Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters
The Committee represents the voice of international library community in copyright and intellectual property issues. The Committee is active in issues relating to i) Disputed claims of ownership of library material; ii) Economics of trade barriers to the acquisition and use of library resources and effective library services; iii) Subscription and license agreements; and iv) Wide range of other legal matters of international significance to libraries and librarianship. (http://www.ifla.org)
ii. IFLA Document Delivery and Resource Sharing Section (Formerly Document Delivery and Inter lending Section)
The Section’s prime objective is to extend and improve document delivery and inter-lending both nationally and internationally through the use of new technologies and increase co- operation among libraries and document suppliers.
iii. IFLA Voucher Scheme
This scheme was launched by IFLA in 1995. Under this scheme IFLA issues plastic vouchers of Euro 8 and Euro 4 to be used for inter library loan transactions. Libraries purchase these vouchers from IFLA HQ and use those for payment towards inter-library loans and photocopies of material. Vouchers have unlimited validity and can be re-used any number of times. Libraries that supply more items can redeem their excess vouchers by sending them to IFLA HQ.
iv. ISO-ILL (ISO: 10160:1997)
ISO-ILL standard entitled “Information and Documentation-Open System Interconnection-Inter- Library Loan Application Service Definition”, provides technical definition of messages as well as set of rules on how to use these messages between the systems. Many libraries that use multiple ILL methods, are implementing ISO ILL compliant systems, because this enables the libraries to manage all their ILL transactions in a single database. (http://www.iso.org)
The emergence of Electronic Document Delivery Systems has improved the speed and efficiency of the DDS, but has brought many competitors in the document delivery service market. Users have the options to avail the services of publishers, e-journal service providers, database producers and aggregators to search and have instant access to the document they need. At the same time libraries are becoming part of library consortia for site licensing of electronic scholarly publications such as e-journals. This has resulted in less demand for journal articles. National document delivery centres are witnessing decline in request for document supply. Though the requests for journal articles have decreased, ILL requests for books (returnable) have witnessed considerable increase. Many libraries are even purchasing books in response to ILL requests.
4. Translation Services
Over 50% of the literature in science and technology is published in languages other than English. English speaking researchers do not have access to this literature unless it is translated in English. This problem was realized more after the World War II, when government sponsored research particularly in areas of space sciences, nuclear sciences and defence sciences picked up momentum. There was great demand for translation of research papers published in languages other than English. Many documentation centre sand special libraries attached to R&D organizations started providing translation services to their scientists on demand. The demand was particularly more for the journal articles. Two kinds of services were organized within the information centres.
i. In-house translation service to cater to the local requirements of the organization from a few foreign languages into English; and
ii. General translation service, which provided translation service to any individual or organization from large number of foreign languages into English or vice versa on payment basis. (For example, Foreign Language Service of NISCAIR)
In many countries, national translation centres came up to monitor translation activities in the country. These centres either carried out translation work themselves or acted as referral centres for collecting, processing and announcing the translations done by various agencies in the country. Some of the major national translation centres came up during 1950s and 1960s.
In this Module, we will study about translation services provided by various agencies, R&D activities in translation, particularly in machine translation and bibliographical control of translations carried out by various agencies in the world.
4.1 Translation Process and Translation Methods
Translation is the process of transferring information content of the text from one language (L1) into another language (L2). The former (L1) is called ‘source language’ and the latter is called ‘target language’. In translation process, the translator analyses the given text in the source language from various view-points including meaning, grammatical structure of the sentence(s), terminology, etc. and comprehend the information contents of the sentence(s). The more accurate the comprehension of the information contents of the sentence(s), the more precise will be its transfer in the target language. A translator, therefore, should have sufficient knowledge of the source language as well as that of the target language. In addition, he/she should be subject expert to understand the terminology of the given subject. Subject knowledge is an essential requirement, specifically for translating S&T documents.
The appropriate method of translating any text depends on the material to be translated. Material in science and technology and social sciences is translated adhering to the contents of the original. This is known as ‘Literal translation’. Literal translation is utilized for factual type of material, such as commercial correspondence, legal material, technical material as well as scholarly material in pure and applied sciences and social sciences.
Whereas translation of material in humanities, such as novels, plays, poetry, films, television, radio, motion picture scripts and vocal music text, etc. Is ‘Literary translation’. In literary translation, the style and techniques of expressing feelings are more important.
The major difference between literal and literary translation is the delivery of material in target language. Translation of literary material is generally for mass consumption, whereas translation of scientific, technical, legal and commercial material is for the specialists in the given field. The other difference is that science and technology translations are done once, while literary classics (such as novels, religious books like Bible, Bhagwat Gita, etc.) are repeatedly translated.
4.2 Translation Services in Scienceand Technology
As mentioned earlier, several national level translation centres came up in various counties to monitor translation activities in the country. These centres either carried out translation themselves or acted as referral centres for collecting, processing and announcing the translations done by various agencies in the country, e.g., National Translation Center, USA and European Translation Center, Delft, the Netherlands (both these centres are no longer functioning).
4.2.1 International Translation Centre (1975-1997) (formerly European Translation Centre)
To prevent duplication of translation effort and exchange translations carried out by various agencies in the world, International Translation Center (ITC) came up in 1975. ITC did not translate but registered and indexed translations performed by cooperating institutions, firms, and individuals who voluntarily deposited copies of the translations with the centre. International Translation Center centralized translation announcements made by participating agencies and published World Translation Index (WTI). ITC published 10 issues of World Translation Index per year. First issue of the WTI provided list of cover-to-cover translated journals. WTI covered citations of cover-to-cover translated journals; ad-hoc translation of periodical articles, patents, standards, books, regulations, etc. INSDOC (now NISCAIR) published National Index of Translations, a quarterly publication covering citations to translations done by INSDOC and other agencies in India. National Index of Translations was also sent to ITC for coverage in WTI. By the end of 1990s, most of the major translation centres in various countries were no longer operating due to paucity of funds. This resulted in significant decline in translations made on ad- hoc basis. ITC had to work hard to locate material for citations in WTI and subscription to WTI also steadily declined. This led to the closure of International Translation Centre in December 1997.
4.2.2 Index Translationum (1932+)
Published by UNESCO, Index Translationum is an international bibliography of translations. It provides details of books translated in the world into English covering all fields of knowledge. Each year, about 100 UNESCO Member Countries, send bibliographical details of books translated in their country to the UNESCO Secretariat. UNESCO brings out Index in print annually. From 1979 onwards, UNESCO is maintaining the machine readable database of this Index. The database contains cumulative bibliographical details of over 2,000,000 books translated and published in about 100 member states of UNESCO.
4.3 Translation Services in India
In India several Government and Public Sector Organizations, R&D institutions in science and technology have in-house translation facility to meet their own translation requirements for limited number of languages. Some such organizations are BARC, DESIDOC, BHEL, MECON and HAL.
4.3.1 NISCAIR Foreign Language Service
NISCAIR (Erstwhile INSDOC) has been providing translation service to S&T community since its inception in 1952. It caters to the translation requirements of National laboratories, S&T institutes, R&D Organizations, Corporate and Public Sector Undertakings, Universities, Research scholars, etc. NISCAIR provides translations of S&T documents from 20 foreign languages into English. The languages include Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Rumanian, Russian, Serbo- Croatian, Spanish, and Swedish, etc. NISCAIR also provides reverse translation (English into foreign language). It undertakes translation from English (maximum of one page) into French, German, Russian and Spanish. Translation of document in English into Japanese (Full document) is also undertaken. The translation work is carried out by experienced staff translators and panel of translators registered with NISCAIR.
4.3.2 Translation Activities in Humanities and Social Sciences in India
There are twenty-two official languages recognized by the Government in India. Hindi in Devanagari script is official language of the government and English is an associate language. Though there are orders from Government of India, that all official communication should be done in Hindi, but in reality it is not true. Quite a lot of communication is done in English and most State Governments function in their own regional languages. This situation demands urgent need for translation of official documents. Apart from official documents, there is urgent need for translation of text books, scholarly material, literary material, etc. In response to this need, a number of organizations in India are actively involved in translation activities in the field of humanities and social sciences.
Some of such organizations are as follows:
a. National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and National Book Trust are both engaged in translation of text books in various Indian languages. (http://www.ncert.nic.in) (http://www.nbtindis.gov.in/)
b. State Council of Educational Research and Training carries out translation work from English into state languages and from state languages into English and vice-versa. (http://www.edudel.nic.in/scert.html)
c. Sahitya Academy is the central institution for publication and promotion of literary activities in 24 Indian languages including English. The Academy gives 24 annual awards to literary works in Indian languages. It gives equal number of awards to literary translations from and into languages of India. The academy has launched four Centres for Translations in Bangalore, Ahmadabad, Kolkata, and in Delhi. In addition, it has archive of Indian literature in Delhi. (http://www.sahitya-akademi.gov.in/)
d. Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages conducts training courses in foreign languages including German, French, Russian, Arabic, Spanish and Japanese. The institute also carries out translation work. (http://www.indiaedu.com/universities/deemed/central- institute.html/)
e. Institute of Asian Studies, Chennai is involved in research, training, translation and publication activities in Asian languages. The institute carries out study and research in Tamil, Kannada, Japanese, Telugu, and Buddhism and related translation and publication activities. In addition, the Institute is carrying out research in Manuscript ology and Folklore studies and translation activities related to these areas. (http://www.istituteofasianstudies.com/)
f. Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) carries out literary translations of books and other documents to project Indian cultural heritage to the world. The Council’s translation and publication activities focus on books related to Indian culture, philosophy, mythology as well as traditional music, dance and theatre. The Council has translated Sanskrit classics into number of foreign languages including French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and English. (http://www.iccrindia.net/)
4.4 Machine Translation
Machine translation (MT) is application of computers to the task of translating text from one natural language to another. In MT system, the computer program analyses the text in one language, i.e., the ‘source language’ and then produces another equivalent text in another language, i.e. the ‘target language’ without human intervention. Machine translation is also known as automatic translation. The systems for automatic translations have been under development for over 60 years.
At present most of the government organizations in the world are funding research projects in the field of machine translation. Currently the state of machine translation is such that it involves human intervention at pre-editing or post-editing phase. This implies that translation produced by MT systems must be revised or ‘post-edited’ by human translators if it is to attain publishable state. However, in the fields with limited range of vocabulary and simple sentences, MT systems are producing good results. For example, TAUM, a Canadian MT system, translates weather reports from English into French without any human intervention.
4.4.1 MT Systems for Mainframe, Personal Computers (PC) and Internet
Many commercial MT systems, such as SYSTRAN, METAL, LOGOS and FUJITSU ATLAS developed initially for mainframe computers, have brought out their PC based versions. SYSTRAN Company offers a wide range of PC products, such as SYSTRAN Professional, SYSTRAN Personal, SYSTRAN Office Translator and SYSTRAN Web Translator. The SYSTRAN MT system with large dictionary database and large number of languages have advantage over other PC based Systems.
At present, there are four types of demands from MT systems:
a. MT Systems for Dissemination: This demand is for quality translation for publication purposes. To fulfil this demand, most of the MT systems have augmented their systems by developing translation tools, like terminology databases, translation memories, translation workstations, etc. for human translators to ‘post edit’ the translated text.
b. MT Systems for Assimilation: This demand is for quick ‘rough translation’ to get an idea about the document content. Sometimes users are satisfied with draft translation produced by MT systems, because they can extract or assimilate what they need to know from the unedited version of the translation. With the availability of cheaper PC-based MT Systems in the market, this type of use has substantially increased.
c. MT Systems for Interchange: This demand is for the translation of text on the Internet, such as translation of web pages, e-mail, and electronic ‘Chat’. This type of demand is increasing rapidly. To fulfil this demand there is need for immediate translation to convey basic content of the message. Here MT System are playing major role, as they can operate virtually, in-real time and online. People are using MT systems for this purpose and have no objection to the poor quality of translation, because it fulfils their immediate need.
d. MT Systems for Information Access: This demand is for integration of translation software into:
i. Search and retrieval of full text documents from databases (e.g., retrieval of translated electronic version of journal articles in science, technology, and medicine or for retrieval of bibliographic information.)
ii. System for extracting information from texts in particular from newspaper reports (e.g., product information).
iii. Systems for summarizing texts.
iv. Systems for integrating non-textual databases.
v. Another area of MT research is the development of systems for spoken language translation, e.g., in telephonic conversation and business negotiations.
4.4.2 Machine Translation Research in India
In India most of the information generated is in English and Hindi which comprises bulk of correspondence in government offices. These pair of languages, viz. English and Hindi have been identified as priority areas of research in machine aided translation in India. Accordingly, two specific areas of research have been identified:
• MT Systems for translation between Indian languages, and
• MT System for translation between English to Hindi
Department of Official Languages, Government of India is actively funding projects in MT research.
Currently three institutions in the country namely C-DAC, NCST, Bombay and IITs have taken the lead in developing MT Systems. Ministry of Information Technology has identified following areas for development of domain specific translation systems:
• Govt. administrative procedures and formats;
• Parliamentary questions and answers;
• Pharmaceutical information; and
• Legal terminology and judgments.
NCST, Mumbai has developed ‘MANTRA’, a machine assisted translation tool for translating official language sentences from English to Hindi.
C-DAC has developed ‘VYKARTA”, which can parse English, Hindi, Gujarati and Sanskrit. The System is able to translate letters and circulars from English to Hindi.
IIT, Kanpur has developed ‘ANGLABHARTI’, a machine aided translation system for translation from English to Indian languages, primarily Hindi, for the specific domain of Public Health.
Two translation machine systems from English to Hindi, ‘SHIVA’ and ‘SHAKTI’, are being developed by Carnegie Mellon University, USA and Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore.
4.5 Translation Services from MT Systems
Search Engines like AltaVista and Google are offering rough automatic translation services for many languages. Babel fish, AltaVista’s Internet Translation Service can translate words and phrases or entire websites to and from English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Russian. Google home page offers its messages and buttons to be displayed in 135 languages, including 12 Indian languages. Many of the MT Systems offer free translation facility on the Web. Some of the sites are as follows:
• http://www.translate.google.com
• http://www.online-translation.com
• http://www.translation.babylon.com
• http://www.translate.reference.com
• http://www.freetranslations.org
4.6 Role of Libraries/Information Organisations in Translation Service
Libraries/information organisations can play active role in meeting user demands for translation of documents, by maintaining details of translators and translating firms in the library, so as to contact the right agency when needed. If demands are more frequent, then a library staff member or a resource person should be there either to translate, or abstract or provide summary of the source language document into target language to meet users’ urgent need for translation service.
5. Summary
Referral, document delivery and translation services are responsive services, which are provided by the library when requested by the library users. Referral service is concerned with directing the user with specific needs, to the sources outside the library. The source may be a reputable person, or organization or an agency, which would fulfil the information need of the concerned user. Document delivery service deals with the supply of document, either original or its copy, in print or in electronic form, to the user on demand. Translation service deals with translation of the foreign language documents into the target language as per user’s demand.
The efficiency of document delivery service depends on three factors, namely speed, cost and satisfaction level. Ideally the DDS should be cost-effective, speedily delivered and should satisfy all the requests it receives. Emergence of electronic document delivery systems has improved the efficiency of this service. However, because of e-journal consortia, most of the document supplies centres are witnessing decrease in demand for delivery of documents, particularly of journal articles.
To meet the demand for translation services many national level translation centres came up in various countries. These centres either carried out translation themselves or acted as referral centre for collecting, processing and announcing the translations done by various agencies in the country. International Translation Center published World Translation Index to announce the translations carried out by various agencies throughout the world. International Translation Center closed its operation in December 1997. At present research in Machine Translation is picking up and many commercial MT systems are offering free translation facilities on the Internet.
6. References
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