• What does the acronym EMEC mean?
• What is the precise objective of the EMEC project?
• What is the relationship between EMEC and MISTICA?
• Who started the EMEC project?
• How will it work?
• What will change for the MISTICA virtual community?
• How will the members be helped?
• What are the rights of the MISTICA virtual community in the context of the EMEC project?
• What are the duties of the members of the MISTICA virtual community in the context of the EMEC project?

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EMEC means Effective (Management of) Multilingual Electronic Conferences.

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The purpose of the EMEC project is, on one hand, to handle the electronic conferences better and therefore to face the "overload" of information. On the other hand, to make communication inside the virtual communities easier, and to develop it, particularly through the multilingualism of the list.

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The EMEC methodology has been defined before the MISTICA project (the EMEC project has been formulated with enda-caribe). However, the first EMEC experience is intimately bound to MISTICA since we will try the EMEC methodology in the MISTICA project mailing list.

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Two NGOs have elaborated this project in its original version (in 1996-1997): Funredes and enda-caribe. For further information, see: http://funredes.org/funredes/emec.htm

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There are three important points in the EMEC project :

1. sending of a presentational e-mail of the original message (that is to say a e-mail with the key data of the message and a summary of it)
2. Storage of this message in an associated web site
3. Translation of each message (of the original message - sent by the member - and of the "synthesis" - written by the EMEC team -). In the case of the experiment inside the MISTICA context, the translations will be carried out in Spanish, French, Portuguese and English

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There will be three types of changes: on the level of the mail received by the virtual community, on the level of the mail sent to the virtual community and on the level of the storage. That is to say:

Received mail:

• a very brief record of presentation that includes a synthesis is received, whereas the integral message is not received anymore.
• to read the whole message (in the original language or in translation), one should go to the web page indicated in the record (many mail programs enable to reach this page with a single " click " on the URL)
• e-mails will be received in a single language (the favorite language of each user)

Sent mail:

• according to one's linguistic preferences, one can write in Spanish, Portuguese, French or English
• it is necessary to respect some writing rules (that will be sent to the list in the suitable language) in order to make the program of automatic translation work efficiently.

Archives:

• Now, in the MISTICA list, the Hypermail automatically files the messages sent to the list and, thanks to this program you can look for the messages by author, dates or topics,
• During the EMEC phase, Hypermail will still be used to file the mails sent to the list. Moreover, a storage of the integral messages will be available(search will be possible by author, dates or topics). Later on, we will build a database in which it will be possible to make more advanced researches.

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Rules will be slowly sent to the virtual community. But some have already been sent: those that have already been used in the MISTICA mailing list . And if you need more information, you can visit the MISTICA web site: http://www.funredes.org/mistica/comunidad/metodos/procedimientos01.html (and the following pages).

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• To write in the language of their choice,
• To read in the language of their choice(that is not necessarily the same one as the language in which one writes),
• To save time in the management of their e-mails (the size of the messages is decreasing, and their processing is facilitated),
• To have well-organized files.

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• To get used to this new context
• To respect the writing rules of the language in which they write(Spanish, French, English, Portuguese)
• To go to a web page to read the integral messages