Japanese Technical Information and Its Lingual Media

More Chan 60% of the world scientific papers are now written in English, the international language in the scientific arena. Two-fifths of them are contributed by non-native writers. Japanese scientists and engineers are also increasing their English presentations in American journals as well as in international conferences, since they desire to increase the audience of their R & D results. In the SAE international congress held in 1985, more than eighty papers were presented from Japan. According to Chemical Abstracts Service, half of the chemical reports from Japan are written in English and the rest in Japanese. In scientific and engineering fields of Japan, many English journals are published, as well as Japanese ones which also carry synopses and captions described in English. To cope with language barriers, machine translation systems are now being developed in Japan, to translate Japanese into English or other languages and vice versa. Two major information centers, JICST and JAPIO, are planning to make overseas online service of Japanese literature and patent information, via English.