OAK RIDGE, TN – Now you can find non-English scientific literature from databases in China, Russia, France, and several Latin American countries and have your search results translated into one of nine languages. With the beta launch today of Multilingual WorldWideScience.org, real-time searching and translation of globally-dispersed collections of scientific literature is possible. This new capability is the result of an international public-private partnership between the WorldWideScience.org Alliance and Microsoft Research, whose translation technology has been paired with the federated searching technology of Deep Web Technologies.

 

Microsoft Research Corporate Vice-President Tony Hey said, "We are extremely pleased to have our Microsoft Translator technology used with WorldWideScience. Built at Microsoft Research, this translation technology already provides translations to millions of users. Partnering with WorldWideScience is an opportunity to advance science across language barriers and improve scientific discovery."

 

While a large share of scientific literature is published in English, vast quantities of high-quality science are recorded in languages where the research is performed, and the pace of non-English scientific publishing is increasing. Multilingual WorldWideScience.org^BETA will benefit the English-speaking science community, enabling searching and translation of non-English sources. It will also benefit native speakers of other major languages (Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian) by translating search results into the user’s language of choice. More languages will be added in the coming months.

 

Multilingual WorldWideScience.org^BETA was officially launched at the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) annual conference held in Helsinki, Finland.

 

Dr. Walter Warnick, Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information within the Office of Science, emphasized both the "open government" aspects and the potential for accelerating scientific discovery with the addition of multilingual translations across nationally-sponsored R&D results and other science. OSTI serves as operating agent for WorldWideScience.org. WorldWideScience Alliance Chairman, Richard Boulderstone from the British Library, noted that WorldWideScience.org has become "the world’s most important scientific resource, where the global science community can share knowledge."

 

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