European Multilingual Thesaurus on Health Promotion in 12 languages. Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish

Outi Merilainen
STAKES - National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health 
P.O. Box 220 - FIN-00531 Helsinki (Finland)
outi.merilainen@stakes.fi
 
 

The result of the merging of the products of three multilingual, regional thesaurus projects carried out in western, southern and northern Europe and funded by the European Comission. 
Available on the Internet: 
http://www.hpmulti.net
 



REGIONAL PROJECTS
 

  • Western European project (1994 -95) Dutch, English, French and German
  • Southern European project (1996-99) Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish
  • Northern European project (1997 - 99) Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish

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    MERGING PROJECT (1999 - 2001)
     

  • Project co-ordination: NIGZ - Netherlands Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Netherlands
  • Responsibility for the contents of the Thesaurus: CSESi - Centro Sperimentale per l'Educazione Sanitaria interuniversitario, Italy
  • Responsibility for the technical aspects: SPRI - Hälso- och sjukvårdens

    • utvecklingsinstitut, Sweden
  • Source language: English 
  • Collaborators: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom

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    COOPERATION ORGANISATION
     

  • European Management Committee with one delegate from each of the three Regional Management Committees
  • Regional working groups with a co-ordinator for each language and 
  • Experts on terminology and linguistics

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    COMPILING PROCESS
     

  • Merging of the three four-language thesauri into one database
  • Extracting the working versions for each language
  • Discussions on the guidelines for the completing process
  • A workshop concerning additions, exclusions and corrections 
  • A workshop for deciding on the macro-structure
  • Testing
  • Publishing on paper and on the Internet
  • Marketing Maintenance

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    TERMS
     

  • There are over 1,200 terms in the Thesaurus 
  • The terms cover the key issues of health education, health promotion and patient education on European level
  • The emphasis is on the practice of health promotion, not on compiling a theoretical list of terms
  • The terms are commonly used in all the regions involved 
  • The most important regional terms have also been included 
  • Local terms which are used only in one country have been excluded

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    STRUCTURE

    The thesaurus is divided in

  • An alphabetical display of the mutually agreed terms in English, each followed by eleven equivalent terms in the other languages
  • A display of the macrostructure
  • A systematic display of terms in English 
  • A permuted index in English
  • Eleven alphabetical, one-language sections with the respective non-prefered terms, hierachical and associative relationships and key indices

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    LESSONS LEARNED
     

  • All languages should be included in theprocess from the very beginning
  • Schedules should be realistic and allow enough time for consulting over cultural, 

    • linguistic and regional disagreements, and for solving unforeseen technical problems 
  • Proper guidelines for working methods and processes are vital
  • The project organisation should be designed so as to allow any changes among 

    • the delegates especially in projects of long duration
  • The necessary official agreements should be clear and be given careful consideration 
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