Third eContent Call for proposals

The third eContent call for proposals was launched on the 20 December 2002 by the European Commission. The call incorporates a fixed deadline that closed on 21 March 2003, and a continuous submission scheme that closes on 28 May 2004, 17:00 Luxembourg time. The indicative total budget available for the call is 29 million euro of Community contribution.

Participating countries are the 15 EU Member States, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Latvia, Norway and Poland. The integration of organisations from the Candidate Countries in eContent activities will be a priority.

The evaluation of proposals submitted under the fixed deadline will be done in June 2003. The first evaluation of proposals submitted under the continuous submission scheme will be done in May 2003. After May 2003, further evaluations of continuous submission scheme proposals will be done every four months.

[Prospective proposers should check that they have the final versions of documents relating to the call before submitting proposals. While we always try to provide the most up to date versions of official EU information, legally binding documents such as call guides and forms should be downloaded from the CORDIS eContent site.]

The objective of Action Line 2 (AL2) of the programme - Enhancing Content Production In A Multilingual And Multicultural Environment - are to ease access to and ensure a wider availability of high quality networked content across markets and communities by encouraging co-operation between the European content and language industries.

The following table and accompanying notes gives an overview of the AL2 sublines targeted in the third call. Full details can be found in the Work Programme 2003-2004.

Subline 2.1: Partnerships for multilingual and multicultural content

The objective of this subline is to foster new partnerships between various actors in the content and language industries involved in the production, delivery and re-purposing of networked content. The focus is on the localisation of applications and services addressing multimedia content accessible through various platforms and devices (e.g. PCs, mobile and communicating appliances, interactive TV).

Demonstration projects are expected to bring together different types of actors active in the localisation process. Partnerships are expected to showcase collaborations between content providers, language players and state of the art technological solutions. They will aim at experimenting effective approaches for designing, producing, packaging, delivering and maintaining services meeting the linguistic and cultural requirements of the target markets.

Inclusion of candidate countries? languages is considered an advantage. A clear business model, identifying the users? base and revenues mechanisms needs to be integral part of the project proposal. The presentation of the business model should include basic elements to judge the soundness of the approach proposed.

Proposals line are expected to cover a multiplicity of languages of the countries participating in the programme. Sheer translation efforts of existing material (not addressing the other components of the localisation process) are not in the scope of this subline and will not be considered for funding.

Potential participants, who will have to include indications how to best address the relevant IPR issues when exploiting protected works, include:

• Digital content players from both the public and private sector planning to enhance their offerings (e.g. web portals, mobile services, location-based services, broadband information and entertainment services).
• Business actors who intend to establish or strengthen their presence on the e-commerce scene through e.g. web marketing, retailing and customer care offerings.
• Providers of localisation technologies, Internet operators and IT vendors.

Feasibility projects aim at progressing from a core group of partners and an initial idea to a broader partnership and more definite development business and exploitation plans. They are designed to provide an easier path for new entrants, especially innovative SMEs and start-ups, who need to identify a user base, establish a viable business and revenue model and find suitable partners and investors. This type of project is expected to ease the participation of candidate countries in the programme.

Subline 2.2: Strengthening the linguistic infrastructure

The objective of this subline is to pool together linguistic infrastructure resources (e.g. lexicons, grammars, rules for terminology building, intelligent indexing etc.) and provide convenient access and a market place to this infrastructure for content providers and distributors, and for suppliers of language services and localisation solutions. The focus is on the networking of existing regional and national resources and their access and use by content actors.

The development of new multilingual resources will also be covered by the action for less widely spoken languages as well as those of the Candidate countries. Proposals in this subline must cover an adequate number of languages.

Consortia that have an idea for the development or for pooling together of their basic multilingual resources, but that have not yet finalised their assessment of the impact on the market or fully defined the consortium, may apply for funding with a feasibility project. Feasibility
projects are designed to ease the participation in the programme of entities of candidate countries.

Potential participants, who will have to include indications how to best address the relevant IPR issues when exploiting data which is copyright protected, include:

• Public bodies, publishers and industrial or commercial groups that hold high-quality language data, which can be used as reference and development material by designers, localisers, translators and terminologists engaged in multimedia projects.

A call for proposals including demonstration projects for this subline will be published in December 2003.

Proposers should be familiar with the following documents and forms which can be downloaded via the links below:

1. The Programme Decision in English [PDF, 220K], French [140K], German [224K], Italian [228K], Spanish [140K].
   
   
2. Links to call text notice as published in the Official Journal (OJ C 320, 20 December 2002): English [PDF, 108K], French [112K], German [112K], Italian [112K], Spanish [140K].
   
   
3. The eContent Work Programme 2003-2004 in English [PDF, 100K], French [104K], and German [112K].
   

Other language versions of the above documents are available via the CORDIS eContent pages.

1. Executive summary of the SPICE report - Export potential and linguistic customisation of digital products and services - in English [PDF, 123K] French [238K], German [145K], Italian [110K].
   
   
2. LISA - The Localization Industry Primer: Executive Summary [PDF, 77K].
   
   
3. Wall Street Journal - Internet Becomes Battleground for Europe to Defend Culture [PDF, 110K].
   
   
4. Financial Times - Multilingual web sites.
   
   
5. Gartner Group - Web site globalisation.
   
   
6. UNESCO Draft Recommendation in the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace in English [PDF, 35K], French [37K], Spanish [34K], Russian [136K], Arabic [456K], Chinese [543K].

Visit our Repository, Related Sites and Background sections for other links and downloads.

Links to publish your organisation profile and search for potential partners are available here.

A central information meeting concerning the third call will be held in Luxembourg on 11 February 2003. In addition, the European Commission organises a set of Information Days across Europe. Visit the CORDIS eContent Events page for links to other events, which will be updated as soon as the details are ready.

The CORDIS eContent Frequently Asked Questions page answers some common queries regarding calls.

For further details please visit the CORDIS eContent contacts page.

Second eContent Call for proposals

The second eContent call for proposals was launched on the 1 November 2001 by the European Commission. The call incorporated a fixed deadline call which closed on 1 February 2002. The indicative total budget available for the call is 26.5 million euro of Community contribution.

Proposals for definition-phase projects, accompanying measures and grants submitted under the continuous submission scheme of the first eContent call for proposals closed on 16 December 2002, 17:00 Luxembourg time.

Action Line 2 (AL2) addresses the intersection of the content and language industries, more specifically the design, production and distribution of high-quality European digital content for the global networks in an increasingly multilingual and multicultural socio-economic environment. The following table and accompanying notes gives an overview of the AL2 sublines targeted in the second call. Full details can be found in the Work Programme 2001-2002.

Subline 2.1.1: Fostering new partnerships and the adoption of multilingual and multicultural strategies

The first call for proposals mainly targeted the private sector and concentrated on the provision of multilingual and multicultural web services and applications, ranging from portals for consumer markets, through vortals for vertical business sectors and specific user communities, to enterprise (e-commerce) web sites.

The second call has a broader scope and covers, in addition to the above areas, the provision of Internet enabled mobile services and of services based upon streaming media technologies, including broadband video and Internet TV, the latter coupling the power of the Internet with interactive digital TV services.

Projects addressing mobile information and transaction services will take account of the emergence of richer content types triggered by technological advances and market developments. They will encompass the provision of personalised, language and location sensitive content, the need to provide almost real-time information from dynamic data feeds with little or no human intervention, the need to adapt content delivery and rendering to the capabilities of multiple access points..

Projects addressing broadband video and Internet TV will build upon the wider availability of affordable high-speed connections and exploit technical developments which are set to deliver near-DVD quality over the Internet These projects will address the challenges raised by the linguistic and cultural adaptation of video, which may have much deeper cultural implications than web text, and the associated need to cater for fast
and low cost subtitling and dubbing of digital video content.

In general, this subline aims at improving market opportunities and competitiveness of European content and language players, with a view to enhancing Europe's multilingual and multicultural presence on the global networks, stimulating economic activity and lowering barriers to the entry of new actors.

The overall goal is to investigate and experiment with new strategies, alliances and solutions for:

• designing e-content products and services that can accommodate local languages and cultural conventions ("internationalisation"), and
• adapting them to the requirements of the intended target markets and communities ("localisation"), while
• reducing the associated cost and time-to-market and easing further content management, maintenance and reuse.
  

Projects and other actions established under this subline will typically focus on the intersection of:

(a) new business strategies and partnerships across industry sectors and national borders,
(b) fixed, mobile and broadband Internet channels, and
(c) innovative products, services and processes coupling global and local content.

Projects will aim at making local products meet the requirements of European and global markets (think local, act global), and alternatively at making global products meet the needs of local communities (think global, act local). It is widely recognised that a successful globalisation strategy has many implications on the organisation and functioning of the enterprise (from product design and marketing through legal and tax related matters to logistics). This subline concentrates on those aspects that are closely related to digital content and interfaces, and the associated user/customer services.

Projects and other actions are expected to encompass products and services where the underlying content can be seen as information, transaction, entertainment, education, self-development, etc. No distinction is made between different categories of content and their intended function and context, in so far as projects yield high-quality content, i.e. content customers are prepared to pay for and with a significant informational, educational, cultural etc. value.

Demonstration projects are expected to bring together multimedia and audio-visual e-content designers, creators, packagers and distributors from both the public and private sector, providers of translation services and localisation technologies, Internet service providers and IT vendors, etc. They will consider and experiment with the most effective approaches, methods and processes for designing, producing, localising, packaging and delivering content-bound products and services meeting the linguistic and cultural requirements of a broad range of target markets.

Projects are expected to address multilingual and multicultural methods and techniques as a means to enhance business capabilities, achieve higher effectiveness and quality of service, and reduce time and cost to target groups. They will address a clearly identified user base and show a strong commitment to exploitation.

Neither research work nor merely technological efforts will be supported, with the possible exception of socio-economic research, since ample opportunities exist within the Framework Programme. Traditional software localisation endeavours or actions addressing the conventional (analogue) audio-visual industry will not qualify under AL2. Likewise, purely incremental development work will not be liable for EU support in the absence of an obvious multiplier effect and of a definite potential for wider business innovation and socio-economic development.

Subline 2.2: Strengthening the linguistic infrastructure

Powerful and flexible software tools are a prerequisite for any sizeable and cost effective e-content design and customisation work. Likewise, web globalisation and other e-content customisation activities depend heavily on the availability of suitably trained professionals, be they multimedia or localisation engineers, translators or terminologists. Strengthening Europe?s linguistic infrastructure implies establishing a collaborative framework comprising interoperable data resources encompassing e.g. multilingual glossaries, translation memories and terminology collections.

The present call addresses and is restricted to the sublines AL 2.2.1, AL 2.2.3, AL 2.2.4 outlined below.

AL 2.2.1: Improving the effectiveness of e-content customisation

This subline encompasses user-driven experimentation with software tools used in support of e-content customisation processes, especially those underpinning complex authoring, workflow, update management and quality control operations in a distributed environment. The sheer volume of e-content in need of linguistic and cultural customisation calls for powerful software aids in support of human translation and adaptation. While it would be neither feasible nor appropriate for the programme to support extensive software development activities, there is a definite need for better and more scalable tools underpinning localisation workflows, managing continuous update cycles, providing sophisticated versioning facilities, etc.

Projects are expected to yield field-proven methods and integrated software suites ready for deployment. Special efforts should be directed towards improving the interoperability of existing tools, especially vis-?-vis the ability to exchange language data and other user resources across different systems and applications. Consortia should be built around a mix of skills and interests reflecting the key dimensions addressed by the proposal. They will typically consist of up to four partners with a balanced division of labour between user organisations and technology suppliers.

They should be aimed at promoting tighter co-operation between companies providing Internet translation, internationalisation and localisation services, including subtitling and dubbing, and the suppliers of the associated software platforms, so as to allow for early trials and user feedback, including any relevant user-orientated adaptation and integration work, with the aim of stimulating a quicker and wider take-up of reliable and affordable solutions.

AL 2.2.3: Addressing the skills gap

This subline is geared towards fostering training actions designed to address the current and foreseeable shortage of specialist skills, and in particular to fill the gap between university curricula and the technical and management skills expected from Internet and multimedia designers and localisers. Although public and private training centres are progressively adapting to the requirements of the net economy, e-content companies experience serious problems in finding suitably skilled engineers and translators.

Projects will concentrate on state-of-the-art e-content design, authoring and publishing methods. They will encompass international design and localisation techniques; legal, commercial and cultural aspects associated with product globalisation; management of complex customisation projects; use of advanced tools and quality control techniques; management of linguistic resources and cultural assets, etc.

The subline is intended to support industrial training actions bringing together training centres and e-content companies, translation and localisation firms, IT vendors and other relevant players to provide the much needed multimedia, engineering and management skills through a variety of channels. Where appropriate, these actions will also contribute to promoting widely recognised quality standards and certification schemes for e-content customisation professionals.

Preference will be given to projects characterised by a definite transnational and cross-disciplinary approach, which are co-sponsored by industry and government, and are designed to address a wide professional community through a series of co-ordinated actions.

AL 2.2.4: Broadening the knowledge base

This subline encompasses the networking of language data centres (AL 2.2.4.1) to improve their interoperability and enhance their suitability for private and public users in the new media sector, and the development of new resources (AL 2.2.4.2) for those languages where market forces have proved insufficient and a clear case can be made for support at EU level, either on socio-political grounds or given their obvious economic and
multiplier effect.

AL 2.2.4.1: Networking of language data centres

The networking of regional, national or domain specific data centres presupposes a consensual framework based upon widely accepted agreements governing the access, use and further development of generic and domain specific language resources, coupled with the provision of effective referral and brokerage services aimed at facilitating the search for relevant data sets and matching demand (by industrial and commercial users) with supply (by private and public bodies holding and maintaining data collections).

This "service" framework must be based on technical standards for data access and interchange enabling owners and users to share and reuse existing and upcoming resources across the Internet. Actions initiated under this heading are expected to build on and add value to ongoing national or commercial activities, and to address non-technical issues such as the handling of IPR, fair pricing and equitable access, and associated revenue models.

In particular, efforts will be directed towards improving the Internet accessibility of high-quality multilingual resources held by public bodies, publishers and industrial or commercial groups, and which can be used as authoritative reference material by designers, localisers, translators and terminologists engaged in multimedia projects.

AL 2.2.4.2: Fostering the development of new multilingual resources

Support for the development and transnational access/distribution of new data collections will cover as a matter of priority less widely spoken languages of the EEA countries as well as the languages of the candidate countries. Actions geared towards the major EU trade partners languages may be undertaken where justified in terms of EU interest and export potential.

The actions established under this heading will address multilingual resources designed for use by e-content professionals in their daily work, and which can speedily contribute to improving quality and effectiveness of linguistic and cultural customisation work. Synergies will be sought with other private and public sponsors throughout the definition and implementation phases of the projects, with the aim of ensuring the widest possible dissemination of results and their long term viability.

Proposers should be familiar with the following documents and forms which can be downloaded via the links below:

1. The Programme Decision in English [PDF, 218K], French [137K], German [220K], Italian [223K], Spanish [137K].
   
   
2. Call details published in the Official Journal notice in English [PDF, 32K], French [33K], German [36K], Italian [33K], Spanish [33K]. See the Official Journal 1 November 2001, pages 20-21, for other language versions.
   
   
3. The eContent Work Programme 2001-2002 in English [PDF, 123K], French [120K], German [138K], Italian [137K], Spanish [133K].
   
   
4. AL2 Reading Notes [PDF, 43K]
   
   
5. AL2 Presentation [PPT, 368K].
   
   
6. Guide for Proposers - the main body of the guide, followed by the Appendix 1 including Part A: Proposals submission form, Part B: Description of objectives and workplan, Part C: Description of contribution to EC policies, economic development, management and participants, Part D: Acknowledgement of receipt form, Part E: Standard application form for Grants [PDF, 1MB], Proposal Submission Forms [Word, 363K], Grant Application Forms [Word, 116 K], Major Financial Provisions for Cost Reimbursement Contracts [PDF, 309K].
   
   
7. Model Contract in English [Word, 172K].

[Other language versions of the above documents are available via the CORDIS eContent pages.]

1. Summaries of projects launched in the preparatory action for the programme.
   
   
2. Executive summary of the SPICE report - Export potential and linguistic customisation of digital products and services - in English [PDF, 123K] French [238K], German [145K], Italian [110K].
   
   
3. LISA - The Localization Industry Primer: Executive Summary [PDF, 77K].
   
   
4. Wall Street Journal - Internet Becomes Battleground for Europe to Defend Culture [PDF, 110K].
   
   
5. Financial Times - Multilingual web sites.
   
   
6. Gartner Group - Web site globalisation.
   
   
7. UNESCO Draft Recommendation in the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace in English [PDF, 35K], French [37K], Spanish [34K], Russian [136K], Arabic [456K], Chinese [543K].

Visit our Repository, Related Sites and Background sections for other links and downloads.

Links to publish your organisation profile and search for potential partners are available here.

Visit the CORDIS eContent Events page for links to events.

The CORDIS eContent Frequently Asked Questions page answers some common queries regarding calls.

For further details please visit the CORDIS eContent contacts page.

First eContent Call for proposals

The first eContent call for proposals was launched on the 15 March 2001 by the European Commission. The call incorporates a fixed deadline call (deadline: 15 June 2001, 17:00 Luxembourg time) as well as a continuous submission scheme (up to and including 16 December 2002, 17:00 Luxembourg time).

Proposals submitted under the continuous submission scheme will be assessed in batches, typically on a quarterly basis. Contract negotiation and awarding operations will be undertaken on a continuous basis, following the schedule detailed in the Work Programme 2001-2002.

The evaluation of all the proposals submitted by the 15 June deadline, whether under the fixed deadline or the continuous submission scheme, is planned for the first half of July 2001. Cost-shared projects and other actions retained for EU financial support are expected to start towards the end of 2001.

The indicative total budget available for the call is 23 million euro of Community contribution.

[Prospective proposers should check that they have the final versions of documents relating to the call before submitting proposals. While we always try to provide the most up to date versions of official EU information, legally binding documents such as call guides and forms should be downloaded from the CORDIS eContent site.]

Action Line 2 (AL2) addresses the intersection of the content and language industries, more specifically the design, production and distribution of high-quality European digital content for the global networks in an increasingly multilingual and multicultural socio-economic environment. The following table gives an overview of the AL2 sublines targeted in the first call.

The following text in this section gives an overview of the AL2 sublines, comprehensive details can be found in the Work Programme 2001-2002 and the AL2 Reading Notes for this call which can be downloaded from the Essential Documents section below.

Subline 2.1: Fostering new partnerships and the adoption of multilingual and multicultural strategies

This subline is aimed at providing better market opportunities for and fostering the competitiveness of European content and language players, with a view to enhancing Europe's multilingual and multicultural presence on the global networks, stimulating economic activity and lowering barriers to the entry of new actors.

The overall goal is to investigate and experiment with new strategies, alliances and solutions for:

• designing e-content products and services that can accommodate local languages and cultural conventions ("internationalisation"), and
• adapting them to the requirements of the intended target markets and communities ("localisation"), while
• reducing the associated cost and time-to-market and easing further content management, maintenance and reuse.
  

Projects and other actions established under this subline will typically focus on the intersection of:

(a) new business strategies and partnerships across industry sectors and national borders,
(b) fixed, mobile and broadband Internet channels, and
(c) innovative products, services and processes coupling global and local content.

They will aim at making local products meet the requirements of European and global markets (think local, act global), and alternatively at making global products meet the needs of local communities (think global, act local). It is widely recognised that a successful globalisation strategy has many implications on the organisation and functioning of the enterprise (from product design and marketing through legal and tax related matters to logistics). This subline concentrates on those aspects that are closely related to digital content and interfaces, and the associated user/customer services.

Projects and other actions are expected to encompass products and services where the underlying content can be seen as information, transaction, entertainment, education, self-development, etc. No distinction is made between different categories of content and their intended function and context, in so far as projects yield high-quality content, i.e. content customers are prepared to pay for and with a significant informational, educational, cultural etc. value.

Actions established within this subline will comprise both focused projects and broadly-based accompanying measures aimed at a wider population within the target sectors. Support will be provided for:

• Full scale, end-to-end demonstration projects (AL 2.1.1) as well as smaller definition-phase projects (AL 2.1.2) aimed at progressing from a core group and an initial idea to a broader partnership and more definite development and exploitation plans; the latter category provides an easier path for new entrants, especially innovative SMEs and start-ups, which need to establish a viable business and revenue model and find suitable partners and investors before undertaking sizeable development work;
• Accompanying measures (AL 2.1.3), mostly geared towards documenting and disseminating best practice, increasing awareness and promoting exchanges, and achieving an higher level of cross-fertilisation between industrial, professional and national activities in the field, including formal and informal consensus building and standardisation forums.
• Grants may be earmarked for conferences, workshops, exhibitions, etc., in areas related to AL2 objectives.
  

Demonstration projects are expected to bring together multimedia and audiovisual e-content designers, creators, packagers and distributors from both the public and private sector, providers of translation services and localisation technologies, Internet service providers and IT vendors, etc. They will consider and experiment with the most effective approaches, methods and processes for designing, producing, localising, packaging and delivering content-bound products and services meeting the linguistic and cultural requirements of a broad range of target markets.

Projects are expected to address multilingual and multicultural methods and techniques as a means to enhance business capabilities, achieve higher effectiveness and quality of service, and reduce time and cost to target groups. They will address a clearly identified user base and show a strong commitment to exploitation.

Neither research work nor merely technological efforts will be supported, with the possible exception of socio-economic research, since ample opportunities exist within the Framework Programme. Traditional software localisation endeavours or actions addressing the conventional (analogue) audio-visual industry will not qualify under AL2. Likewise, purely incremental development work will not be liable for EU support in the absence of an obvious multiplier effect and of a definite potential for wider business innovation and socio-economic development.

The present fixed deadline call mainly targets the private sector and concentrates on the provision of multilingual and multicultural web services, ranging from portals for consumer markets, through vortals for vertical business sectors and specific user communities, to enterprise (e-commerce) web sites.

Subline 2.2: Strengthening the linguistic infrastructure

Powerful and flexible software tools are a prerequisite for any sizeable and cost effective e-content design and customisation work. Likewise, web globalisation and other e-content customisation activities depend heavily on the availability of suitably trained professionals, be they multimedia or localisation engineers, translators or terminologists.

The present fixed deadline call addresses and is restricted to two sublines AL 2.2.1 and AL 2.2.3, outlined below and further detailed in the AL2 Reading Notes, and mainly targets the private sector.

AL 2.2.1 Improving the effectiveness of e-content customisation

This subline encompasses user-driven experimentation with software tools used in support of e-content customisation processes, especially those underpinning complex authoring, workflow, update management and quality control operations in a distributed environment. The sheer volume of e-content in need of linguistic and cultural customisation calls for powerful software aids in support of human translation and adaptation. While it would be neither feasible nor appropriate for the programme to support extensive software development activities, there is a definite need for better and more scalable tools underpinning localisation workflows, managing continuous update cycles, providing sophisticated versioning facilities, etc.

Projects are expected to yield field-proven methods and integrated software suites ready for deployment. Special efforts should be directed towards improving the interoperability of existing tools, especially vis-?-vis the ability to exchange language data and other user resources across different systems and applications. Consortia should be built around a mix of skills and interests reflecting the key dimensions addressed by the proposal. They will typically consist of up to four partners with a balanced division of labour between user organisations and technology suppliers.

They should be aimed at promoting tighter co-operation between companies providing Internet translation, internationalisation and localisation services, including sub-titling and dubbing, and the suppliers of the associated software platforms, so as to allow for early trials and user feedback, including any relevant user-orientated adaptation and integration work, with the aim of stimulating a quicker and wider take-up of reliable and affordable solutions.

AL 2.2.3 Addressing the skills gap

This subline is geared towards fostering training actions designed to address the current and foreseeable shortage of specialist skills, and in particular to fill the gap between university curricula and the technical and management skills expected from Internet and multimedia designers and localisers. Although public and private training centres are progressively adapting to the requirements of the net economy, e-content companies experience serious problems in finding suitably skilled engineers and translators.

Projects arising from this call will concentrate on state-of-the-art e-content design, authoring and publishing methods. They will encompass international design and localisation techniques; legal, commercial and cultural aspects associated with product globalisation; management of complex customisation projects; use of advanced tools and quality control techniques; management of linguistic resources and cultural assets, etc.

The subline is intended to support industrial training actions bringing together training centres and e-content companies, translation and localisation firms, IT vendors and other relevant players to provide the much needed multimedia, engineering and management skills through a variety of channels. Where appropriate, these actions will also contribute to promoting widely recognised quality standards and certification schemes for e-content customisation professionals.

Preference will be given to projects characterised by a definite transnational and cross-disciplinary approach, which are co-sponsored by industry and government, and are designed to address a wide professional community through a series of coordinated actions.

Proposers should be familiar with the following documents and forms which can be downloaded via the links below:

1. The Programme Decision in English [PDF, 218K], French [137K], German [220K], Italian [223K], Spanish [137K].
   
   
2. Call details published in the Official Journal notice in English [PDF, 35K], French [36K], German [39K] - See 2001/C 85/07 in the Official Journal 15 March 2001 for other language versions.
   
   
3. The eContent Work Programme 2001-2002 in English [PDF, 123K] French [120K], German [138K].
   
   
4. AL2 Reading Notes for the call in English [Word, 111K], [PDF, 59K].
   
   
5. AL2 Presentation [PPT, 368K].
   
   
6. Guide for Proposers - the main body of the guide, followed by the Appendix 1 including Part A: Proposals submission form, Part B: Description of objectives and workplan, Part C: Description of contribution to EC policies, economic development, management and participants, Part D: Acknowledgement of receipt form, Part E: Standard application form for Grants [PDF, 1MB], Proposal Submission Forms [Word, 363K], Grant Application Forms [Word, 116 K], Major Financial Provisions for Cost Reimbursement Contracts [PDF, 309K].
   
   
7. Model Contract in English [Word, 172K].

[Other language versions of the above documents are available via the CORDIS eContent pages.]

1. Summaries of projects launched in a preparatory action for the programme.
   
   
2. Executive summary of the SPICE report - Export potential and linguistic customisation of digital products and services - in English [PDF, 123K] French [238K], German [145K], Italian [110K].
   
   
3. LISA - The Localization Industry Primer: Executive Summary [PDF, 77K].
   
   
4. Wall Street Journal - Internet Becomes Battleground for Europe to Defend Culture [PDF, 110K].
   
   
5. Financial Times - Multilingual web sites.
   
   
6. Gartner Group - Web site globalisation.
   
   
7. UNESCO Draft Recommendation in the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace in English [PDF, 35K], French [37K], Spanish [34K], Russian [136K], Arabic [456K], Chinese [543K].

Visit our Repository, Related Sites and Background sections for more links and downloads.

Before developing a full proposal, prospective proposers may use the pre-proposal check service to submit an outline description of no more than three pages detailing:

• type of action (demonstration project, definition-phase project, accompanying measure),
• target action line(s) and problem area(s),
• rationale and related market/user aspects,
• approach and expected results,
• planned effort (person-months) and duration,
• intended consortium (either participants' names or profiles).

Pre-proposals (in Text, Word, RTF, PDF or HTML formats) can be sent to until four weeks before the call closing date. Proposers will receive feedback on their pre-proposal as soon as possible and normally no later than one week after the request.

Links to publish your organisation profile and search for potential partners are available here.

26.04.01 European Infoday - Centre A. Borschette CCAB 0A 36 rue Froissart, Brussels. View the agenda & presentations here.

Visit the CORDIS eContent Events page for links to other events.

The CORDIS eContent Frequently Asked Questions page answers some common queries regarding calls.

For further details please visit the CORDIS eContent contacts page.