a4: Fw: Comintern names: Guadeloupe, Haiti, and Martinique , (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: LeGrace Benson <legrace@twcny.rr.com>

> From: "John E Haynes" <jhay@loc.gov>
>
> Request for review of translations of names of Comintern biographical
files for
> Guadeloupe, Haiti, and Martinique.
>
> The International Computerization of the Comintern Archive
(Incomka)project is a
> project of the International Council on Archives and its partners are the
> Russian State Archive of Social and Political History(RGASPI) in Moscow,
the
> national archives of Germany, France,Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, the
ministry of
> culture of Spain, and the U.S. Library of Congress.
>
> Incomka has two parts: first, to digitize the finding aids (more than
25,000
> pages) to Comintern collections at RGASPI into a electronic database
searchable
> in English and, second, to digitize as images 5% (one million pages) of
the most
> used and historically significant documents of the Comintern.
>
> I write regarding the first part.  The Comintern maintained more than
100,000
> biographical background files, organized by country, on non-Russians of
interest
> to it.  Each of the files has on it a name that was non-Russian (French,
> Spanish, German, English, and so on), was translated in Russian Cyrillic
by the
> Comintern, and that is now being translated into Roman alphabet English
for the
> Incomka data base.
>
> To reduce the number of errors in the Roman alphabet spellings of
> names, we would like scholars knowledgeable in the politics of the
> Comintern era to review our translations to spot obvious garbles and
> misspellings of persons known to historians.
>
> Currently, we are seeking scholars willing to review our translations of
the
> Comintern biographical file names for Guadeloupe (40 names),Haiti (40
names),
> and Martinique (56 names).
>
> The task is not compensated but will be acknowledged by Incomka, and every
> translation corrected will improve the usefulness of the data base for
scholars
> for many years to come.
>
> Persons willing and able to undertake review of any of these lists
> should contact
>
> John Earl Haynes, 20th Century Political Historian
> Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, LM-102
> Washington, D.C. 20540-4689
> Ph: 202-707-1089, Fax: 202-707-6336
> E-mail: jhay@loc.gov
>