For more than six decades, UIC has been publishing multilingual dictionaries with specialised railway terminology. They have become valuable tools for all those working in the international rail sector in need of technical vocabulary. In the 1990s, UIC began managing terminology with a database tool and started editing a CD-ROM, called RailLexic, in addition to the paper dictionaries. This database is constantly being updated and enlarged by UIC in English, French and German, the translations being done by the experts of the respective member railway organisations.
CD-ROM RailLexic 4.0
This CD-ROM enables a search to be made for terms and their translations in the following 22 languages: Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese (not yet complete), Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish. Arabic, Farsi and Norwegian have been published on this CD-ROM for the first time.
The CD-ROM compiles around 16,000 specialised terms per language which span 105 railway-specific fields from permanent way construction to high-speed. For each term, translations, synonyms, grammatical information and information about its usage can be found. Definitions for around 3,000 terms are available. Many terms carry an explanatory note and context to clarify its meaning. For the fourth edition a new entry display has been developed. Users can configure one source language and up to three target languages.
UIC Railway Dictionary
The ’UIC Railway Dictionary’ is the printed version of the RailLexic database containing English, French and German. With more than 16,000 entries per language, it is a reference work to guide both enthusiast and professional through the specialist language that has developed during the long history of railways. For each term, subject fields, note fields and grammatical information are indicated. New entries have been added to this edition, and many entries have been revised to take account of new terminology and developments in the railway industry.
