How Can I Get Material Translated?

Interlibrary loan translation services

Translating material is very expensive. That said the British Library's document supply service holds a fairly comprehensive collection of translations into English. These include more than 500,000 journal articles translated into English from a wide variety of languages, particularly scientific journal articles translated from Japanese, Russian, German and French, ranging in date from the 1800's to the present day. Also they hold cover-to-cover translations of selected Russian scientific serials, patents, standards, conference papers and books translated into English.

A list of some of these titles can be found in Journals in Translation the 5th edition of which (1991) shelved at 050.16/JOU in the General Reference Collection on the Ground Floor of the Library. This publication includes lists of titles in the original language and their English equivalents.

The British Library Document Supply Centre will…

Check for an existing English translation of the document you require.
Tell you if an English abstract appears with the original language article and offer you this as an alternative.
Check for a translation and if none exists, supply the document in its original language instead.

You will need to make it clear on your interlibrary loan request form if only a full translation into English is acceptable and if you do not want the original language item.

Note that the fact that a journal title or article title is quoted in English does not necessarily mean the document you get will be in English. This is especially the case with Japanese journals.

Professional translation services

Translation Experts Limited is a company dedicated to the provision of products and services that bridge language barriers. They manufacture a variety of translation and dictionary software for desktop computers and handheld devices. They have also been developing natural language translation software and dictionaries and have a network of expert translators around the world.

University contacts

It may be possible to find assistance from language speakers in the School of Languages and Area Studies, located in Park Building off Guildhall Square. Translation services are occasionally advertised on their notice boards.

Translation services on the World-Wide Web

IATE (Inter Active Terminology for Europe) is an EU multilingual term bank for translators that translates words across the languages of the European Community. It is particularly rich in words relevant to economics, finance, law, agriculture, transport and telecommunications. There are 48 subject areas and over 5 million words. Each word includes synonyms and definitions. There is an online user guide.

GlossPost : multilingual glossary URLs lists links to a variety of online translating tools including dictionaries. GlossPost is hosted on Yahoo Groups so you will need to set up a (free) Yahoo account to access this group.

The Yahoo! offers a translation service called Babel Fish (after the piscine translation tool in Douglas Adams' A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).

Google Translate offers a translation service (only really practical for small amounts of text) between a wide variety of languages.

Foreign language dictionaries

Foreign language dictionaries are held in the Subject Reference Collection on the 2nd Floor of the Library.

English language dictionaries

Some English language dictionaries are held in the General Reference Collection on the Ground Floor of the Library, but the main collection is in the Subject Reference Collection on the 2nd Floor of the Library.