The Demopædia Encyclopedia on Population is under heavy modernization and maintenance. Outputs could look bizarre, sorry for the temporary inconvenience
Dicionário Demográfico Multilíngüe (Português - projeto da tradução da segunda edição)
Introdução
Índice
- 1 History
- 2 Why on-line?
- 3 Functionalities
- 4 What is next
- 5 How to use Demopaedia
History
Developing the series of multilingual encyclopedic demographic dictionaries is one of the most enduring projects in the history of our discipline. And one of the most fruitful. In the early late 1960s, the United Nations Population Division has assembled a brilliant team of specialists to produce the then state of the art dictionaries in the official languages of the Organization. Two decades later the Division joined efforts with IUSSP to update these reference tools. The researchers and trainers of many countries have joined the project, albeit informally, by tailoring their national modules on the UN/IUSSP standard. As a result the international community might have at its disposal a standardized series of 14 encyclopedic demographic dictionaries. But in practice it does not because all language module are out of print and hardly a couple of libraries in the entire world may be expected to possess all of them.
Why on-line?
The multilingual encyclopedic demographic dictionary on the Internet became widely accessible. Demographic terms, their meaning and cross-references are now two clicks away for students, professors, researchers, government experts, journalists and NGO activists. You can elucidate the understanding of the term in the language of your work. Also, the multilingual dictionary assists you in grasping the subject of specialized texts in other languages.
Functionalities
You can consult the Dictionary's language modules, read them or download and print them: all copyright owners have authorized us to provide you these options. You can search for a demographic term, surf to linked terms and expressions or move to another language or edition. As the Dictionary is structured in thematic chapters, you can locate a term within its contextual environment. The language modules have built-in indexes which makes possible easy navigation and cross-referencing. The Wiki platform provides powerful tools for further development. The specialists could post their additions and corrections on-line and discuss them collectively.
What is next
Demographic knowledge made huge advances since the last editions of the Dictionary have been published. There is a clear sense that the structure and texts need updating. Doing it in a traditional format of 'live' panels and working groups would be hardly feasible. Developing on-line a renewed edition of multilingual encyclopedic demographic dictionary should be efficient and will unleash the potential of wide cooperation of professionals. Demopaedia will host this project.
Demopaedia also has the potential to become a platform for sharing and building a wider knowledge base in demography and population studies. Our vision is an extensive and constantly evolving encyclopedia on population, serving the world community and benefiting from influxes of ideas and texts.
How to use Demopaedia
By searching for a term or demographic expression
The main URL (Internet address) of Demopaedia is http://demopaedia.org. From this main page, you can enter in the search area for a term or expression and choose the language: it will search within the full text of the second (last edition) edition of the Multilingual Demographic Dictionary of this particular language. For Arabic, it will search within the ar-ii.demopaedia.org wiki site.
At least two kinds of link can be retrieved:
- either a numbered page, like 101, 112 etc., which corresponds to a section of the Multilingual Demographic Dictionary. Former users of the printed old books are very familiar with this special but efficient method ;
- either a link to a named page (like for example) which contains the searched expression (read below).
By reading the book
Starting with the first numbered page 10, you will recognize (or discover) the first section (101) of the first chapter of the book.
Each section (about 5 to 10 sections) per page describes a demographical concept by using other similar terms. The terms in bold face are supposed to be main terms (called TextTerm) which have to be translated in any language. A TextTerm is uniquely defined by its footnote number. This unique definition (section number, footnote number), for example 101-1 for Demography, permits an easy link between languages. Sometimes, the footnote is also used to give more details, specific to a peculiar language or country but most of times it is just used for cross-language navigation. Please read the Preface of the original printed books in order to better understand how the dictionaries were originally built.
On the top and bottom of each page, you have navigation bars which helps you to read the next numbered page. When the first digit of a numbered page change, you are accessing a newer chapters. Nine chapters were available for the second edition.
If you need or want to read the page in another available language you just have to click on the link.
You can also have a look at the text of the first edition. And, from there, access to other languages of the first edition.
By reading just a paragraph describing the searched terms
If your search originates from any search crawler you will probably not access to a numbered page but to a more meaningful named page, like fertility rate for example. In that case, you will be able to read the paragraph (section) where fertility rate is defined as a TextTerm in the Multilingual Demographic Dictionary.
Easy access to other translated TextTerms
If you want to directly see how to translate any TextTerm of the same paragraph (section) you can click on the rolling box link and you access to a table of all terms. From any table column, you can jump to the numbered page of a chosen language if you need to read the whole context, including other similar sections.
How to pronounce a term in another language
At the bottom of a named page (not a numbered page) you will access to the audio file corresponding to the correct pronunciation recorded by demographers. This is an ongoing project and many links are still empty (red link).
Index of all named pages
At the very bottom of the page you will have access to the list of all named pages.
Accessing the Multilingual Demographic Dictionary directly by its URL
Accessing a numbered section of the second edition ...
If you want to access to the numbered section 633 of the Arabic second edition just type the URL of the numbered page 63 by entering into your browser: http://ar-ii.demopaedia.org/wiki/63
...and of the first edition ...
Just enter -i instead of -ii: http://ar-i.demopaedia/wiki/63
... and of another language
Just change the two letters using the international English abbreviation of languages:
List of language abbreviations
| Abbreviation | Language |
| ar | Arabic |
| cs | Czech |
| de | German |
| en | English |
| es | Spanish |
| et | Estonian |
| it | Italian |
| ja | Japan |
| fi | Finnish |
| fr | French |
| pl | Polish |
| pt | Portuguese |
| ru | Russian |
| zh | Chinese |
Accessing directly to a term
If you want to access the page directly and you know that this term belongs to the second edition of the English dictionary, just type http://en-ii.demopaedia.org/wiki/Age-specific fertility rates. Please note that you can enter space they will be replaced by underscore. If the name contains accents or cyrillic or Chinese etc. characters, please enter them into the URL, they will be replaced by their Unicode values.
Accessing the Open Encyclopedia on Population
Each TextTerm (demographic term or expression from the second edition of the Multilingual Demographic Dictionary which is translated into any language) has its own named page in the Open Encyclopedia on Population. A first start for a multimedia Encyclopedia is the original definition given in the Multilingual Demographic Dictionary. It has the advantage of being well describeed and translated into various languages. But it has the disadvantage of being old (1981 for the second edition in French): some sections or even chapters have to written or rewritten. Also Encyclopedia have always used graphs or pictures which were missing in the printed Multilingual Demographic Dictionary and modern Encyclopedia can be multimedia and offer animated drawings or audio files.
Using the free software of the Wikimedia fundation Demopaedia will offer the same possibilities with the same rules and constraints.
And the syntax is similar to any Wikipedia site, i.e by suppressing any mention of the edition, just keeping the two letters of the abbreviated language: http://en-ii.demopaedia.org/wiki/Age-specific fertility rates
When will it be open?
Because the Demopaedia site will be opened at the International Conference on Population in Marrakesh in early October 2009, the Open Encyclopedia will be opened only to the members of the [http//iussp.org IUSSP association] (a first training will be proposed to participants). Once the various tools in order to fight against spammers and vandalism will be installed, the site will, hopefully, be opened to any specialist in Population Studies.
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