The Science Section's Technical Reports Collection has “TT” series reports undertaken by the NSF, dating from 1959 to 1975 in hardcopy and/or on microfiche from 1966-1975. The hardcopy reports, most of which date from 1959-1962, are translations of monographs, technical reports, journal articles, patents and theses of interest to the U.S. Government and industry. The majority of the translations in the hardcopy collection are of material originally in the Russian and German languages. There are relatively few hardcopy reports from 1963-1975.

Technical Translations used report numbers with the letter code “TT“, followed by the year of publication, expressed in two digits, then a hyphen and the accession number. This identifier is used to order each specific item.

Requests for an Technical Translations (TT) are made at the Reference Desk in the Library's Science and Business Reading Room, 5th floor, Adams Building or via the Science and Technical Reports Ask a Librarian Service. To purchase a copy of TT please contact the Library's Duplication Services.

Background on Technical Translations (TT) Series:

The Technical Translations Series consists of English translations foreign language scientific and technical material produced during the Cold-war period. The series was the result of two translation efforts.

One of these efforts was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF funding enabled the Scientific Translation Center to translate Russian typescripts and technical reports, which were then deposited at the Library of Congress. Translations produced by the Scientific Translation Center would first announced in the Bibliography of Translations from Russian Scientific and Technical Literature, published from 1953 until 1956.

The second effort was by the Special Libraries Association (SLA), which, in 1953, founded the SLA Translations Pool. This became the SLA Translations Center and was housed for many years at the John Crerar Library of the University of Chicago, before briefly becoming part of the Library of Congress' National Translations Center (NTC) in 1989. The SLA Translations Center worked on translations from Russian and other languages. At the outset of their translation efforts, in 1953, SLA issued their own publication, the SLA List of Translations.

In 1955, the SLA List of Translations became Translation Monthly, and began to include lists of translations from the Scientific Translation Center in addition to those from their own SLA Translations Center. In 1959, however, Translation Monthly was itself replaced by an announcement bulletin, produced by the Department of Commerce’s Office of Technical Services (OTS), Technical Translations. OTS changed its name to the Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information in 1965, and continued to publish Technical Translations until 1968.

Learn more about the National Translations Center from  Ildiko D. Nowaka's article "National Translations Center: Its Development, Scope of Operation and Plans for the Future," Science & Technology Libraries (Volume 3, Issue 2), 1983 pp. 13-19. Another source to consult on translations sources and their activities is Ellis Mount's Role of Translations in Sci-tech Libraries . New York : Haworth Press, c1983.

National Translation Center:

The Library of Congress closed the National Translations Center on September 30, 1993. Library of Congress holdings of 30,000 translations from the Center, covering 1989 through 1993 were transferred to the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) in Ottawa, Canada, and may be obtained from that organization, which has since been renamed as the Canadian National Science Library (NSL). Some may also be available from the British Library.