Global Language or Global Problems.

Although--or perhaps because--environmental health concerns affect every person on the planet, scientists often suffer a modern-day Tower of Babel syndrome, using a diversity of terms in all different languages to describe the same ideas. So European, American, and international agencies have decided to collaborate on the development of a global multilingual environmental thesaurus to eliminate translation time and create easier communication between international parties. Representatives from the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy's national research council), the European Environment Agency (EEA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) met in January 2000 in an effort to begin breaking down linguistic barriers hampering environmental information exchange between nations. These agencies expect other partners to join in the creation of the global environmental language thesaurus.

The focus of this international initiative is to agree on a common vocabulary for indexing data contained in environmental information systems, Internet sites, databases, and other electronic resources according to a mutually agreed upon set of key words. A common vocabulary, according to the team, will assist in the development of environmental information systems and expedite the retrieval of such information from electronic resources through information searches and content cataloging by librarians, researchers, database developers, translators, policy developers, and the public. A common vocabulary may also help to expand international research partnerships in environmental health by facilitating communication. Domingo Jimenez-Beltran, executive director of the EEA, said in a 7 February 2000 press release that this initiative "will increase access to timely, relevant, and reliable information on the environment by a wide range of language groups that are currently impeded by linguistic barriers."

The consortium will begin the process by looking at EnVoc: Multilingual Thesaurus of Environmental Terms, which was published in 1997 by the EEA and UNEP. The group plans to combine this tool with the EEA's Generalized Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus and supplement the resulting document with terms from other sources such as the EPA's Terminology Reference System and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation's thesaurus. Currently, the Envoc thesaurus uses 12 languages, and the new thesaurus is expected to incorporate even more. A plan for the global thesaurus, anticipated to be accessible on the Internet, on CD-ROM, and in print, is expected by September 2000.