Statistics Explained goes multilingual Luxembourg, Dissemination Working Group, 17-18 April 2012

Statistics Explained? “Eurostat’s Wikipedia” (using Mediawiki software) Central publication platform Created and maintained collectively Centralising and integrating content Duplicating and partially replacing paper/pdf But also a website ! For the general public, not specialists Easy to navigate & intuitive, linked everywhere At present 481 statistical articles, 76 background articles, 1300 glossary entries in English, expanding 18 April 2012 Dissemination Working Group: Statistics Explained

18 April 2012 Dissemination Working Group: Statistics Explained

The next challenge Statistics Explained targets general public, EU citizens Most of them not fluent in English Statistics Explained should speak to citizens in their language and go multilingual And thus reach a huge new audience for European and national statistics 18 April 2012 Dissemination Working Group: Statistics Explained

Facilitating & risk factors Facilitating factors: Mediawiki software designed for multilingualism (cfr. Wikipedia) Technical setup ready (via multilingualism plug-in) Risks: Resources: fully multilingual site, constantly moving, impossible to build and maintain Managing complexity: keeping >20 language versions in 3 alphabets updated and aligned ! Quality guarantees editing unfamiliar languages, using specialised statistical terminology 18 April 2012 Dissemination Working Group: Statistics Explained

General principles English = mother version Workflow: Other-language page cannot be created unless English one already exists Updating in English page, others translated URL other-language page = English name + ‘/xx’ (xx= de, es, fr, it, nl, etc.) Workflow: Creation of English translation file (Dissemination Unit) Translation (Commission DG Translation) Conversion to Statistics Explained article (Dissemination Unit or contracted out - very simple and rapid) 18 April 2012 Dissemination Working Group: Statistics Explained

Two multilingual projects Yearbook and Regional yearbook French and German version no longer paper/PDF publication, but set of Statistics Explained articles 103 articles also in German and French yearly update integrated in regular workflows 20x20 20 most important and representative articles in 20 EU languages (besides English) across statistical domains (most articles also in Yearbook or Regional yearbook, hence already available in French and German) updated at least yearly 18 April 2012 Dissemination Working Group: Statistics Explained

Timing and status Yearbook and Regional yearbook 20x20 insertion by external contractor ongoing Regional yearbook 2011: Word file, ‘manually’, done some 500 glossary pages: ongoing Yearbook 2012: Word file including markup codes, started 20x20 insertion by Eurostat Dissemination unit, at present 5 to 10 articles daily; most translations received, others expected soon Deadline for both: end of May 2012 18 April 2012 Dissemination Working Group: Statistics Explained

Present situation Articles Main Page, article collection, navigation 109 non-English articles on line (of the foreseen 570: 19%) in 13 languages covering over 90% of EU population: Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish 3 pilot project languages Dutch, Greek, Polish almost complete, with 17 articles each (missing ones only recently available in English 2012 version) Main Page, article collection, navigation Ready for 7, 6 and 11 out of 20 languages, respectively Status changes daily! 18 April 2012 Dissemination Working Group: Statistics Explained

Expected outcome Multilingual offer Updating View All articles, some 500, in English 103 articles in French and German 20 articles in all EU languages Updating English latest version, continuously updated other languages may lag behind (not more than 1 year) View Language switch at any page (only available language versions shown) Main page, navigation and category page in all languages (plus theme structure for French and German) 18 April 2012 Dissemination Working Group: Statistics Explained

Let’s take a look … http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained 18 April 2012 Dissemination Working Group: Statistics Explained

Give us your feedback, correction, suggestions, … Some requests … Give us your feedback, correction, suggestions, … Add deep links on your site Inform your users 18 April 2012 Dissemination Working Group: Statistics Explained