Visit the NAL Services page to download the NAL Agricultural Thesaurus and Glossary of Agricultural Terms.

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NAL Publishes Spanish Language Agricultural Thesaurus and Glossary

By Len Carey
May 7, 2007

The USDA National Agricultural Library (NAL) has published Spanish language versions of its NAL Agricultural Thesaurus (NALT) and Glossary of Agricultural Terms. The NALT and Glossary in Spanish support increased Spanish language access to agricultural information throughout the United States and the world, accommodating the complexity of the Spanish language from a Western Hemisphere perspective.

This first Spanish language edition of the NALT comprises more than 15,700 translated concepts. Included are definitions for more than 2,400 of the concepts, in both English and Spanish, which are published in a separate interface as the Glossary of Agricultural Terms. Both publications can be downloaded and used through the NAL Services web page.

The NALT is used at NAL and at other organizations as a key component for organizing and describing agricultural information. Publishing a Spanish language edition of the NALT makes it a valuable bilingual reference tool which benefits both Spanish and English speakers. Organizations using the NALT terms can easily add a Spanish language capability to their agricultural information applications.

Of the estimated 480 million Spanish-speaking people in the world, about 87 percent live in the Western Hemisphere. Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the United States, and is the most rapidly growing language used in U.S. agriculture. Future Spanish-language editions of the NALT will change in response to recommendations from the Spanish-speaking agricultural community and NAL cooperators.

Translation of the NALT into Spanish was accomplished by NAL with the American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC). ADEC is a nonprofit international distance education consortium of approximately 65 state universities and land-grant colleges that promotes the creation and provision of high-quality, economical distance education programs and services to diverse audiences.

The USDA National Agricultural Library, in Beltsville, Md., is the world's foremost agricultural library and part of the Agricultural Research Service, USDA's chief scientific research agency.