The visit to the Soviet Union of the U.S. Working Group 10.04, "Construction in Seismic Areas", during October 12-22, 1986, resulted in the signing of a new protocol. Both sides agreed to participate in the preparation of English-Russian and Russian-English dictionaries for use in translating technical articles relating to earthquake engineering. At the same time, the U.S. delegation was presented with a comprehensive English-Russian dictionary which included terms commonly used in earthquake engineering. During the return visit of the U.S.S.R. Working Group 10.04 during May 31-June 9, 1987, a new protocol was signed, which contained the resolution that "Both sides agreed to continue to work to generate a Russian-English as well as an English-Russian dictionaries on earthquake engineering." This action is to implement this agreement. Professor William Nash will prepare a Russian-English dictionary containing only those words and phrases pertinent to earthquake engineering and seismology. The completed volume will be prepared by contemporary desk-top publishing techniques and will consist of approximately two hundred and fifty pages. The dictionary will make it possible for a user with only a limited knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet to translate research papers from Russian into English. Two hundred copies of the dictionary will be prepared and distributed. The dictionary will also be submitted to the National Technical Information Service for continued availability. Dr. Nash is eminently qualified to undertake this project. He has an international reputation in the field of structural mechanics, as well as through his editorship of the Journal of Nonlinear Mechanics. He is an active researcher in the area of earthquake engineering, and has for many years translated selected technical articles from Russian into English. He also has the institutional facilities available to complete this task.
