Claire wrote...

>I would be interested to hear from those who have worked with and/or used
>bilingual labels in their museum or individual exhibitions.

At the Israel Museum, Jerusalem we label all our exhibitions in Hebrew and
English and quite often in Arabic as well. Not only for this reason, we
tend to keep our labels and wall panels as concise as possible and view
this service as appropriate to our local, multicultural community and to
our international visitors.

>1) How did you select the individuals to do the translating and writing?

Working in our publications department are full time English, Hebrew and
Arabic editors who are directly responsible for all texts for our visitor:
catalogs, wall panels, invitations, and labels. Content may initially be
written in any one of the three languages, often in another language and
the editors, working directly with the curators will over see this
proccess.

>2) Did you do evaluation (informal or formal) on how the two languages
>worked in the exhibits?  Was there an effect simply from having 2
>languages?

We have had puzzled vistors whenever these languages were for some reason
NOT available (have any of you heard of openings when not all of the lables
where quite  ready - happens sometimes).

>3) Did you translate all of the text or just parts?

Our policy is to provide English and Hebrew for all texts, and more
recently Arabic texts, (standard in the Youth Wing) but occasionaly a
catolog may appear in one or another of the languages due to limited
funding.

>4) What are important design considerations to keep in mind? (to make it
>easy to identify the language of your preference; to avoid covering the
>exhibit in text, etc. . .)

We don't have a language of preference and provide all our texts
graphically in a standard format... which is not always easy when two of
the languages are read from right to left... but not impossible.

>5) Is there a way to ball park estimate the additional cost for writing,
>editing, graphic design and graphic production in two languages?

The cost of full/part time editorial and graphic staff and in the relevant
languages.

I am sure that you will agree that the idea of textural information
available to our public is intrinsic to the museum experience and in a
multicultural community, labels in other local languages should be made
available.

Once this policy has been decided by a museum, I feel that all the
financial, editorial, graphical and technical problems are easliy resolved.

One little comment..one of the advantages of electronic texts available on
the gallery floor or in the entrance pavilion to the museum, where visiors
may select the language of their choice, may provide a solution to some of
these issues. This will not work for lables of course but certainly for
wall panels, general introductions and catologs this may be a solution you
might like to concider.


Susan Hazan
Head of Multimedia Education Unit
The Ruth Youth Wing
The Israel Museum
Jerusalem