New Theatre Words
The worldwide success of New Theatre Words is the best example of the international network of OISTAT specialists. The first edition of Theatre Words - which included the five Scandinavian languages and English - was published in 1975 by the Nordic Theatre Union. As a direct result of the success of that first edition, a second appeared in 1977 adding German and French.
In 1980, a nine-language edition was published. OISTAT took part for the first time in the compilation and editing of New Theatre Words. Financial support from UNESCO helped this project become a reality. In 1988, the Publication and Information Exchange Commission started to create a new edition. The demand for a new, more up-to date vocabulary was universally expressed.
It seemed natural to try to create this book using today's computer technology, which would allow for the compilation of as many languages as there was interest for. The Swedish OISTAT Centre (STTF) and STTI took on the challenge to coordinating this immense revision project. It took several years before it could be presented to the international theatre community. The concept of NTW is to provide a vocabulary for touring companies to enable them to communicate/ The illustrations facilitate the identification of the terms even if you are not able to pronounce the foreign language or to read it.
NTW is printed in a pocket format that allows you to carry it on you anytime. New Theatre Words contain 1258 words with 11207 references. Subsequently, three versions of NTW were published, containing on the whole 24 languages:
New Theatre Words World Edition: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Russian
New Theatre Words Central Europe: English, French, German, Dutch, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Slovakian, Bulgarian, Russian, and Serbian
New Theatre Words Northern Europe: English, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Estonian, Lithuanian, and Russian
New Theatre Words has grown with the OISTAT community and hopefully will grow further. NTW can be purchased from the following OISTAT Centres and from the OISTAT secretariat.
