UNESCO's Unique Data Base Goes Online On 75th Year

December 7, 2007 3:37 p.m. EST

Paris, France (AHN) - The world's biggest data base on transliteration, the Index Translationum, is now online.

The data base grows annually by 100,000 new entries and contains cumulative bibliographical information on books translated and published in some 800 languages in about 130 countries since 1979.

The Index brings together - according to standard rules of transliteration - some 1.7 million entries listing more than 250,000 authors.

Maintained by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the index is a work tool unique and the result of international cooperation of national libraries in all domains of knowledge.

Essentially intended to serve librarians, archivists, researchers, editors, journalists, translators and the public, the data are more than trivia.

As UNESCO puts it, "the Index testifies to historical currents in thought, topical issues, reading habits, cultural exchanges and works of universal nature."

Each year the national libraries or bibliography centers send UNESCO the bibliographical data concerning translated books in literature, the social and human sciences, art, history and the natural sciences.

In no particular order, the most translated authors in the world are Walt Disney Productions, Agatha Christie, Jules Verne, Vladimir Lenin and William Shakespeare.