Look and learn this Christmas

You've got the technology but what about the information? Over the next three pages we look at 'edutainment' CD-Roms to fascinate fact- finders of all ages

Anglicising Encarta

Microsoft's Encarta encyclopaedia has many strengths, as the review opposite points out. But until now it had one huge failing - it was American, and boy, did it show it. Look up Yorkshire and you will be told only about a place in Pennsylvania. Look up cricket, and you will find out about a small insect. But look up baseball ... and you will be blown off your feet.

Not all parents have been happy with this, nor have they been happy with the American accents of the audio clips. Which is why two years ago Microsoft commissioned Websters, a small publishing house in London, to Anglicise Encarta. The result is now available as the "World Edition". Be warned, though, that if you buy a computer with Encarta "bundled" with it, you will probably get the American version.

The World Edition is really the British edition, with a few nods towards Australians, South Africans and the like. The Anglicisation, oddly, was overseen by Jean-Luc Barbanneau, who describes himself as a "lapsed Frenchman".

Adrian Webster, who runs the publishing house, says the project amounts to far more than a localisation of the existing product: 30 full-time staff were working on it for 18 months, while the 300 contributors included such luminaries as Lord (Asa) Briggs and Richard Dawkins.

"The first step was to de-Americanise it," Mr Webster says. "We took out 3,000 articles of the 26,500 already there, added 3,800 - one million words - and went through all the rest to change them where necessary."

In addition, 1,672 audio clips were re-recorded in British English, and 500 new ones were added.

Webster's office is full of manila folders. Each contains an original American article and the edited version: the editing of "bands", for example, shows that extensive coverage of American marching bands has been excised with red ink, while a new section on brass bands has been added. "We took away vast quantities of baseball players," one of the editors comments.

A lot of the changes were obvious - much less on US cities or baseball teams, much more on counties and cricket. But even the Americans thought Encarta's coverage was too domestic, so there are more international articles - consultants in 28 countries were asked what they thought should be included.

One of Webster's problems was to jam the pictures, audio and video clips on to the CD-Rom. "The multimedia takes up 83 per cent of the disk space, so we have to do a careful balancing act," Mr Webster says. Seven new video clips were added, including a speech by Nehru, Paul Keating talking about the Queen, and the Normandy landings. Fortunately, there was plenty of baseball action to excise. Webster is signed up to do the next World Edition. In time, presumably, the Australians and South Africans will resent being bundled together one one imperial disk and will get their own versions.