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Linguistic diversity at the UIA
Provision of information
From its origins in 1910, the information produced by the Union of International Associations has been in several languages. Initially this was French, with some English, Spanish and German. Following its reconstitution in 1950, the emphasis switched to English, with some bilingual publications, and notably with an effort to produce the Yearbook of International Organizations in alternate editions, English then French, then English again. From the 1970s, the emphasis switched for budgetary and marketing reasons to English only, with occasional editions in French (1974, 1980). In 1980 the Yearbook was produced with the support of the francophone Agence pour la Coopération Culturelle et Technique (ACCT). This financial support was renewed with the production in 1996 of a French translation of the Yearbook, to accompany the English version, on a single multi-lingual CD-ROM. Details on translation can be found under 'Procédures de traduction en langue française'. The ACCT is now called the Agence de la Francophonie.
However, whatever the edition of the Yearbook, titles of international organizations have always been supplied in all official languages used by the organization. Keyword facilities have been offered primarily in English and French, and more occasionally in all languages of official titles. The database on this site illustrates the potential of hyperlinks to enable users to move between English, French, German and Spanish version of descriptive information on international organizations. As an illustration, alphabetic title indexing is also given in all official languages in the demo.
The UIA journal Transnational Associations has continued to appear with both English and French texts.
Accessing information
On CD-ROM, a number of constraints on production of multi-lingual reference books are reduced. Access software, such as Folio Views, permits provision of user interfaces in a variety of languages. Past editions of the Yearbook CD-ROM have been provided with interfaces in English, French and German. In addition to an effort towards parallelism between English and French texts, the 1996 CD-ROM also had descriptive information in Spanish and German, and included name and address information in separate databases on the same CD for international bodies using any of the following official languages: Italian, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, Latin, Esperanto, Russian, and Nordic languages.
Through development of a 100,000 multilingual thesaurus, users continue to be able to access information from its CD or on-line databases using subjects in the above languages. Thus a German user can get information available in English only using a non-English subject term such as "hund".
Semi-automatic translation
The UIA has been obliged to explore ways of combining a variety of techniques, automatic and semi-automatic, to translate texts from English into other languages, notably French.
Terminological confusion and cultural constraints
The UIA has long been concerned with terminological confusion in several areas:
From its origins in 1910, the information produced by the Union of International Associations has been in several languages. Initially this was French, with some English, Spanish and German. Following its reconstitution in 1950, the emphasis switched to English, with some bilingual publications, and notably with an effort to produce the Yearbook of International Organizations in alternate editions, English then French, then English again. From the 1970s, the emphasis switched for budgetary and marketing reasons to English only, with occasional editions in French (1974, 1980). In 1980 the Yearbook was produced with the support of the francophone Agence pour la Coopération Culturelle et Technique (ACCT). This financial support was renewed with the production in 1996 of a French translation of the Yearbook, to accompany the English version, on a single multi-lingual CD-ROM. Details on translation can be found under 'Procédures de traduction en langue française'. The ACCT is now called the Agence de la Francophonie.
However, whatever the edition of the Yearbook, titles of international organizations have always been supplied in all official languages used by the organization. Keyword facilities have been offered primarily in English and French, and more occasionally in all languages of official titles. The database on this site illustrates the potential of hyperlinks to enable users to move between English, French, German and Spanish version of descriptive information on international organizations. As an illustration, alphabetic title indexing is also given in all official languages in the demo.
The UIA journal Transnational Associations has continued to appear with both English and French texts.
Accessing information
On CD-ROM, a number of constraints on production of multi-lingual reference books are reduced. Access software, such as Folio Views, permits provision of user interfaces in a variety of languages. Past editions of the Yearbook CD-ROM have been provided with interfaces in English, French and German. In addition to an effort towards parallelism between English and French texts, the 1996 CD-ROM also had descriptive information in Spanish and German, and included name and address information in separate databases on the same CD for international bodies using any of the following official languages: Italian, Spanish, Portugese, Dutch, Latin, Esperanto, Russian, and Nordic languages.
Through development of a 100,000 multilingual thesaurus, users continue to be able to access information from its CD or on-line databases using subjects in the above languages. Thus a German user can get information available in English only using a non-English subject term such as "hund".
Semi-automatic translation
The UIA has been obliged to explore ways of combining a variety of techniques, automatic and semi-automatic, to translate texts from English into other languages, notably French.
Terminological confusion and cultural constraints
The UIA has long been concerned with terminological confusion in several areas:
- relating to the various understandings of "non-governmental" organization and the manner in which these are exploited, whether unwittingly or deliberately
- cross-cultural challenges to terminological clarity and the problems of linguistic imperialism, notably associated with English
- definitions of world problems, strategies and values, and the possibility of confusing them in practice (work in this areas has been done within the framework of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential)
