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la question est vraiment trop difficile pour ćtre resolue tout de suitę, on pourrait en reporter a discussion a la prochaine Conference internationale, c’est-a-dire a notre Sixieme Congres intemational.

M. Zeitlen : Speaking personally, of course, I am quite satisfied with English and French — but that does not matter from the point of view of Israel. I might also point out that French and English are the dominating languages for our Communications and also for the worlds with which we are mostly concerned in contacts with other countries. However, reverting to our present position, which is that of members of the Executive Committee, I think we should recognise the dominant part that Russian is playing in technical literaturę. I presume that English and Russian are the technical languages in the world of today. Hence I am impressed by the suggestion that the delegate from Russia has madę, that a summary be published in Russian as a recognition of their contribution, in particular the growing contribution they are making in the national society meetings, which I notice has increased this year over what it was in 1957.

Le Prśsident : I was not elear when Mr Tsitovitch was speaking whether by “ reports ” he meant that the summaries should be in several languages in the printed proceedings or only that, forexample, the agenda for the Executive Committee, reports by sub-committees and similar documents should be in several languages. Could I know which was implied ?

M. Tsitovitch : Je propose d’inclure la langue russe pour les resumes des rapports presentes, mais non pas pour la correspondance entre les pays, ni pour les rapports prćsentes par les sous-commissions.

Le President : I think we could consider this question under two headings. First there is the question of permanent printed proceedings of our Conferences. In generał it seems to me that everybody is happy with the existing situation, save only the suggestion that perhaps the smali summaries at the beginning of papers might be in three languages and not in two. We either stay exactly as we are in French and English, with the summaries and the papers in either French or English or, secondly, we have the summaries in three languages. No one, I think, is asking for morę than this. Is that agreed ? (Proposition adoptee).

The extra cost of three summaries would probably not be very great; therefore I think that we may seek the generał opinion of this Committee, by puttinguphands, tosee whether we feel that it is desirable to inerease the number of summaries at the beginning of each paper to three instead of two. As to which language this extra one should be, we can discuss this in a minutę. Let us for the moment consider whether we are in favour of having three language summaries.

M. Rao : Mr President, do you not think it better that we postpone this problem, if we are going into details like this ?

Le President : I do not think so, Dr Rao, because it seems that there is a very generał measure of agreement.

M. Rao : But the question of a fourth language would be raised, and so on; so I say let it be discussed in greater detail later. I think it would be better to postpone. That is what the Russian delegate has said.

Le President : I think the Russian delegate suggested that it might be postponed to the next Conference. This seems to me too long. We should decide this matter before we leave Paris.

M. Rao : Meanwhile we can have investigations by the Secretary, and the possibilities, and so on ?

Le Secretaire : As to the possibilities Dr Rao referred to, I do not think there is any difficulty in adding a third summary to the proceedings. The amount involved, say 400 papers, is probably something in the order of 150 pages, and that is a relatively smali portion of the whole because it will be of value, and I do not think that anyone organising a conference would find that a particular burden. Certainly we would not have done so in London.

M. Kerjsel (France) : Vous venez de proposer le triple rćsume, et le bilinguisme pour les Communications. Est-ce que ceci comporte ou non les figures avec sous-titres en trois langues ? Ceci me semblerait plus difficile a realiser.

Le President : As a footnote to Mr KerisePs remark, I have often wondered whether any very useful purpose was served by having captions to the figures in two languages. Tfu p.iper is in one language. But that is another issue.

I think that the suggestion at the moment, Mr Kerisel, is only that the summaries should be in three languages and no change whatever should be madę in the papers themselves, including the figures. I think we could seek the opinion of the Committee on this point. Would those in favour of having three summaries put up their hands ?

I see there is a very elear majority for having the summary in three languages. If you like we can regard that as testing the feeling of the meeting, and we could only make a formal resolution on this matter later. I would be quite prepared to do this. Would that be agreeable ? It seems to me quite elear that generally we feel this is desirable. Dr Rao, however, has madę the point that we have not had very long to think about it. If you like I would be prepared to delay a formal vote on this matter until the next meeting. Is that agreeable ? (Proposition adoptee).

As to the additional language, this, I think, is something we could well discuss among ourselves and take a vote when we come formally to consider the problem later.

Now comes the second part of the problem, the question of how many languages one should allow to be spoken during the Conference itself. This appears to me not to be a matter of principle but a matter purely of techniques and finance. It is clearly possible to have four, or possibly five, languages with no difficulty technically. Financially it is costly. I would say that in principle it is a very good thing that people should be able to speak in the language they are most familiar with, even though it cannot always be their mother tongue.

I would suggest that this matter be left to the Secretary to investigate whether we can afford to carry out the proposal put forward by the Bulgarian representative and mentioned by no less than sevcn other speakers — all of whom said almost exactly the same thing — that if it turns out to be financially possible we recommend to the host country for the next Conference that they should arrange for simul-taneous translation from, perhaps, four languages. I see no objection to this provided we stick to the principle that the reports when printed are only in English or French.

And if such countries as Russia and Spain are willing to help financially in this matter I see no reason why we should not very gratefully accept their offer and this no doubt would help at a futurę Conference. The order of magnitude involved would be about $ 500 per language — perhaps $ 400.

M. Koenig (Germany) ; Germany would help also to finance the fifth language.

Le President : Yes, if we are speaking of five languages it will be English, French, Russian, German and Spanish. We are grateful for your offer to help financially, but I think we are now in the realm of mechanism and not of principle. So long as we agree in principle that people should be allowed

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