The United States National Science Foundation, a government agency, has opened negotiations with the Israeli Embassy here to secure Israel’s assistance in the evaluation of Soviet scientific achievements, it was learned here today.
Many hundreds of Israeli scholars, learned in science and multi-lingual, would translate a tremendous amount of Soviet technical literature published between 1946 and 1954. Arrangements with Israel are expected to remedy a situation in which American technical libraries are deficient in translations of Russian scientific publications.
U.S. authorities believe that Israel possesses talent which could be quickly organized into a task force to do the massive translation job. Details of the U. S. offer and financial considerations are not yet available. But the American request has been forwarded to the Israel Government in Jerusalem for a decision. A reply is expected shortly.
The National Science Foundation has decided to ask Congress for additional funds to pay for the project in Israel. The approach was made to Israel basically because of the shortage in America of qualified technical experts who can translate scientific Russian papers. America has been deprived of the benefit of much technical information freely published in Russia because of this deficiency.
The National Science Foundation would work with the Israel Embassy. Technical papers would be sent to Israel through Israel Government channels and assigned to scholars there at the discretion of the Israel authorities. When translations are approved, printing of final manuscripts would be done in Israel.
Most of the translation and printing expenses would be covered by the U.S. Government. However, a portion of the cost could be recovered by sale of copies to universities and industrial research institutions.
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