Technical dictionaries

by Karel Thönissen

There are some great technical resources on the Internet, like MathWorld, the WikiPedia, etc. Most of these are in English, but some are in French, German or Italian. Language itself is not a problem, not even for complex technical text. Not being a mathematician by formation or profession, I do manage to read the WikiPedia or MathWorld.

The problem, however, is something else. From school and university I remember the Dutch terms for certain concepts. Now the Dutch resources are normally useless, because they are either non-existent, too small, or unreliable as they are pasted together by 16-year olds scamming their ways through the Dutch educational system.

Now if I want to know more on 'dekpunten' or 'redox-reeksen' when I am developing software, I have a problem. The Dutch resources are useless and the foreign resources have no entries for Dutch words. One needs good technical dictionaries for translation between relevant languages. We need dictionaries for translation from Dutch to English in the areas of mathematics, physics, linguistics, micro-electronics, signals processing, mechanical engineering, biophysics, and mind-reading. Asking an expert, revealed that there is no such dictionary in the field of mathematics readily available. The best thing available is a paper copy of a dictionary from 1974 in the university library in Amsterdam. This is how we propel this country into the digital era of the 21st century.

How I found the translation of 'dekpunt'? I remembered that Luitzen Brouwer had formulated the 'dekpuntenstelling'. Looking in the WikiPedia under Brouwer gave the translation for 'dekpunt'. Lucky shot. BTW, it is a shame that the most important Dutch mathematician and logician since Simon Stevin has only such a brief entry in the WikiPedia.