This four-language dictionary of robotics, written by two East German authors, cannot be recommended for many reasons (including the fact that its coverage is largely limited to the mechanical side of robotics).

If the book were based on German, there might be some justification in filling page after page with parallel translations of composite words whose components are easily translated and also separately found in the dictionary; but since the book is ostensibly based on English, there is little sense in cluttering up fifteen pages with composite terms. Furthermore, although acceleration is left out from the dictionary, six composites starting with acceleration are included. In German these composites are new single words, but anyone who knows absolutely nothing about forming composites in a foreign language and about declension and conjugation in Russian will be at a complete loss using this dictionary, which gives no grammatical hints.

The level of competency of the authors in the four languages they present ranges from questionable to atrocious. Did you ever hear of an English word abonent for subscriber? (It is actually a Russian word.) The German Teilnehmer, which is given for subscriber, might better translate as participant. Is there any English text using adjusting force generation of robot movement? (There is a note under motion to look under movement.) The book makes a mess of acronyms: APL is not identified as A Programming Language but as an astonishing Algorithmic Procedural Language; AC is not given at all although alternating current is; and ANOVA appears as ANOV. There are many more serious lapses. Sometimes there are clear mistranslations such as valuation for evaluation. This is bad since it involves quite a change in the lexicographic order. The treatment of English, the lead language in the book, is particularly inept, but the Russian and French treatments are also unsatisfactory. Why is curve in Russian always traektorya (trajectory) and not krivaya? There is no hint that the translation of algorithm may be not only algorithm but also algorifm. In French, fonction de robot trigonométrique would be a function of a trigonometric robot, which is a weird, nonexisting object.

I checked only a few pages of the book but found none without a howler.