Foreign Language Translation of Chemical Nomenclature by Computer

Chemical compound names remain the primary method for conveying molecular structures between chemists and researchers. In research articles, patents, chemical catalogues, government legislation, and textbooks, the use of IUPAC and traditional compound names is universal, despite efforts to introduce more machine-friendly representations such as identifiers and line notations. Fortunately, advances in computing power now allow chemical names to be parsed and generated (read and written) with almost the same ease as conventional connection tables. A significant complication, however, is that although the vast majority of chemistry uses English nomenclature, a significant fraction is in other languages. This complicates the task of filing and analyzing chemical patents, purchasing from compound vendors, and text mining research articles or Web pages. We describe some issues with manipulating chemical names in various languages, including British, American, German, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Polish, and Hungarian, and describe the current state-of-the-art in software tools to simplify the process.