[Taxacom] Latin anyone?

[Neal Evenhuis]

At 12:33 PM -1000 10/15/10, Richard Zander wrote:
>That's not exactly what I meant, Neal. How much trouble do you and 
>other zoologists you know have in translating descriptions of new 
>taxa published in languages other than English? Like Chinese?

It was difficult before OCRing and Google translations -- now at 
least one can scan, OCR, pop it into Google (in almost any language 
or alphabet -- Thai and Vietnamese [among the few remaining] are 
still a problem) and get the gist of what the description is.

>
>Are all exotic language taxonomists now publishing their new names 
>in English, in your experience? Maybe they are.

There are a few Europeans that still publish in their home country 
language, but as far as I can tell, most, if not all, non-roman 
alphabet languages have a "western" language diagnosis if not the 
entire description.

>
>Or do zoologists now just ignore all descriptions of new taxa 
>published in Chinese, Hindi and similar non-Latin alphabet 
>langulages? Also, how do you know when a description of a new taxon 
>in a group of interest is publshed in a non-Latin alphabet foreign 
>language paper?

Zoological Record is pretty good at catching most papers. I have, 
however, found a few obscure Chinese journals online that have been 
missed (mainly from the 1980s and 1990s before Zoo Record started 
getting more diligent about what they abstracted). They were at one 
time reflective of only what was picked up by the British Library 
system but have expanded.

-N