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OCR for page 5
Time Required
for Scientists
to Learn Russian
The Committee believes that in some cases it might be simpler and
more economical for heavy users of Russian translations to learn
to read the documents in the original language. An article by J. G.
Tolpin, titled, "Surveying Russian Technical Publications: A Brief
Course" Science 146, 1143 (1964~], indicates that in eight to sixteen
2-fur class periods scientists can learn to identify articles of interest
in Russian publications. Sometimes they can extract what they need
from equations, tables, graphs, and figures. In many other cases, a
partial oral translation of the material of interest is all that is
needed. These are illustrations of the generally acknowledged fact
that the technically competent reader needs only a little knowledge
of a foreign language in order to make use of foreign journals in
his field.*
Indeed, several well-known studiesT indicate that in 200 hr or
less a scientist can acquire an adequate reading knowledge of
Russian for material in his field. An increasing fraction of American
scientists and engineers have such a knowledge.
The capability for teaching government personnel to read Russian
scientific text already exists, but so far this service has remained
largely unused. The Defense Language Institute, West Coast Branch
(formerly the Army Language School), has developed two courses of
instruction and special texts for this purpose. One course runs 6
weeks, the other 10. The Committee has been informed that the
Defense Language Institute would welcome the enrollment of students.
Information concerning the 10-week course is presented in Appendix2.
HA corollary that should be given more emphasis is that even the best
translation is of no use to a man who cannot fully understand the subject
matter and place it in the context of other work here and abroad.
TR. D. Burke, Some Unique Problems in the Development of Qualified
Translators of Scientific Russian, P-1698, The RAND Corp. (May 12, 1959y
W. N. Locke, J. Cheme Educ. 27, 426 (1950).
M. Phillips, The Foreign Language Barrier in Science and Technology,
Aslib, London, England (1962), p. 15.
5
Representative terms from entire chapter:
foreign language
