 Offering translations of on-line
material is counter to the trend of
Internet development today. Probably
owing to the major US role in
Internet development,
English is the dominant language of
the Web. Although on-line articles
are intended for world consumption,
most sites only provide access in
English. Perhaps this should come as
no surprise from a country that has
traditionally not emphasized
proficiency in other languages.
There have been several
demonstrations in the Journal that it
is technically easy to offer
translation of a given work. In the
first issue, an article by
Radoslaw Spiewak on histamine testing
was complete with translation of the
full text into Polish. Another
article in the same issue on browsers
and viewers provided translation into
an executive summary. Unlike
traditional print media,
space is not an issue. And since
browser software assembles the
articles from both text and image
files, in most instances translation
can be limited to
the relatively small
text files alone.
Improving access through the use of
additional languages shouldn't apply
only to the readers. Another
partnership with our Spanish and
Portuguese speaking colleagues,
perhaps of greater significance than
simple translation, is
distributed editing. The
anglocentric concept of traditional
medical journals has been that 'any
material of worth needs to be written
and published in English.' There may
have been some value to this
assertion in the immediate
post-World War II era when most major
science was being performed in the
English speaking world, however there
is currently a great deal of
expertise in the non-English speaking
world which is not easily shared
because of the language
barrier. Does it make sense that
excellent academic work of our
Spanish and Portuguese colleagues
should be first translated into
English to undergo peer review, and
then translated back into the
original language for those readers?
Our colleagues have the expertise and
are willing to review material in the
original language. With that in
mind, we have now partnered
with academic counterparts in Brazil
and Spain to undertake peer
review in the original language for
these areas. For these works then,
English will be the translation.
An interesting analogy of this system
exists in the computer world. There
has been a recent trend of replacing
mainframe computers with smaller
units which are interconnected:
distributed computing. We are moving
away from the traditional centralized
structure of publishing to a system
of several networked sites with
centrally coordinated but independent
processing of material. The
new arrangement then is one of
distributed editing and production of
the Journal. Hopefully the end
result will be increased efficiency
and ease of access.
What are some of the difficulties one
might anticipate with distributed
journal production? Ensuring
uniformity of review will require a
great deal of coordination of the
editors. Also having many languages
involved is similar to
having multiple operating systems. A
system will function best when all of
the sites are able to freely
communicate with each other.
English-Spanish-Portuguese
is a minor challange compared to the
possible addition of Japanese,
German, and French. If we are able
to partner with colleagues in those
areas, double translations (e.g.
Japanese to English to Portuguese)
may be necessary.
The distributed production of the
Journal would have been difficult had
it not been for the immediacy of
communication provided by the
Internet. Electronic management of
manuscripts is far more efficient for
review publication than
traditional transcription, review,
and editing of hard copy with
communication of hard--copy through
the mail. Although coordination
needs to be centralized,
the efficiency of fully electronic
version allows for distribution of
the creation effort. It isn't the
independent functioning of of each
site, but the connection and
coordination of the effort which
provides the greatest promise.
The Journal was created with the
intention that it be a shared effort
in the academic community, a new
journal for the world of dermatology.
And now we can share in the wealth
of expertise of our colleagues with
removal of the language
barrier to both reading and
contributing to this forum. We hope
these innovations will serve to
demonstrate yet another way that
publishing on the World Wide Web can
provide improved access to medical
information.
© 1997 Dermatology Online Journal
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