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Dissertation Contents.
1. Why the Assistant Programme project was conceived. 1.2 Personal interest in this area of study. 2. Description of the Assistant programmes. 2.1 Programming languages and external software used.
2.2 The Assistant Programme layout.
2.3 Selecting phrases for the email. 2.4 Tackling questions of style in textual expression. 2.5 Search for phrases not found in the General Email Subjects section.
2.7 Assistant Trainer: for more advanced students. 2.8 Building the Corpora for the Assistant Programmes.
3.1 Machine Translation systems and how they work. 3.2 Practical applications of the MT processes. 3.3 Description of a translation software package.
4. Assistant Programme effectiveness 4.1 Translation effectiveness. 4.3 The methodological approach of the Assistant Programmes as a self-study tool.
5. Demand and practical implementation. 5.1 Comments on the ELAN report: “Effects on the European Economy of Shortages of Foreign Language Skills in Enterprise (2006)”.
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The philosophy behind the creation and development of the Assistant Programme project. Dissertation.
2.2 The Assistant Programme layout.
The Home Page (Fig. 1) is a links page to information pages and help files. It also allows the user to view certain pages correctly which require a full page format. A note in the Home Page recommends the user to go immediately to Email Compiler or to the Help Page for Email Compiler to start work on constructing an email in the foreign language: either Spanish or English depending on the Assistant Programme being used. An alternative, for more advanced learners is offered in the Trainer version. The Trainer allows a student to select email phrases in the L2 and subsequently check accuracy via a Spanish translation.
Fig 1
2.2.1 The first screen of Email Compiler (EC) (non-trainer version).
The first screen of EC is a vertical two-screen frameset of 50% 50% proportions (see Fig. 2).
Fig. 2
The right frame is called the Compiler Section/Componer Email. It contains the phrases to build up the email. Pages which appear in the right frame provide the user with successive lines to build up an email on a certain topic. The first page in the right frame holds adaptable phrases for the email introduction and openings (Estimado señor: etc). Then the user selects the subject matter to write about from an index of standard business email topics (see and click on menu link
Fig 3.
The user subsequently selects page 1 (Fig 4.) from an email topic which offers phrases for the first line of the body of the email and so on to the end of the email where a final page, CLOSES/DESPEDIDA, provides a selection of closes for the email (Muchas gracias por su ayuda, Atentamente, etc.).
Fig 4
The phrases are given in Spanish and on selection of suitable phrases and words, a text area below the Spanish phrase automatically selects the English equivalent from a pre-written and translated source. (Fig. 5)
Fig. 5.
The left frame is called the Receiving Boxes/Ventana de Edición area. This page serves as a recipient of all the phrases selected by the user. The Spanish phrases in one section and the English equivalents in another. The result is that two emails are compiled line by line; one email in the user's mother tongue (L1) and the other its translation (L2). (Fig.6)
Fig. 6
Once the emails are successfully compiled the user selects a button to send both emails to a common text area field:
Fig. 7
(This article is copyright Michael Bilbrough 2008. All rights reserved.)
2.3 Selecting phrases for the email.
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to go to Fig 3.). 
