The electronic age is waiting in the wings for its grand entrance into the expanding work of the Translation Department of The Christian Science Publishing Society.
If Christian Science is to compass the globe, its literature must be translated not only into major European languages but also into the key tongues of Africa and Asia. It is not a question of if but when machines will be used to speed up the translation work and save translators many tedious man-hours of nonessential routine. "It must come," Alfred F. Schneider, Manager of the Translation Department, said.
The Translation Department already has a staff of thirty-three "inside men" and two hundred and twenty translators in the Field. As a service department, it is equipped to handle all the translation work of The Mother Church, including that which is commissioned by the Publishers' Agent. All Church correspondence to and from non-English-speaking people, besides The Herald of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy's writings, etc., is translated there. In 1967 this will involve up to thirteen thousand letters, or nearly 20 percent of the work. It is predicted that within twenty-five years there will be one hundred and fifty Boston-based translators and scores more in the Field.
