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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.
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)”.
The ELAN report was a comprehensive survey carried out by CILT, the National Centre for Languages and InterAct International on behalf of the European Commission. The following extracts and comments presented here are relevant to the the Assistant Programme project regarding its user philosophy, didactic approach and possible demand for this type of software.
5.1.1 Demand for practical translation tools and language training.
The below quote demonstrates the need for comunication (written or oral) via the foreign language. ie. the use of foreign agents. The Assistant Programmes could be useful in email communication because it allows initial contact even though the staff's language competence is not fully developed. After contact has been established, staff have the opportunity to improve foreign language skills through subsequent email communication. The resource of pre-translated phrases offered in the Assistant Programmes ensures a safety net of foreign expression help if and when learners are doubtful about or lack confidence in their ability to write automonously.
“There was varied practice in the use of translators and interpreters - between 4% (Ireland) and 84% (Lithuania) of businesses per country. Use of local agents produced the most uniform set of responses with the majority of countries falling within the range 20%-40%. The use of local agents tends to be a recourse of smaller businesses lacking the investment resource to appoint additional staff themselves to service the requirements of a new market.”
A stumbling block for many companies is that language learners among staff are often loathed to enter into foreign language communication with counterparts from other countries until they feel suitably linguistically proficient to do so. Similarly, assessors from Human Resources may decide learners should not be allowed access to international communication until they have reached some predetermined level (eg. an exam such as TOEIC at Coritel). The drawback with this reasoning is that learners are denied the hands on practice required for language acquisition.
Regarding language training in large companies or medium and small companies (SME's) the report had this to say:
“86% of companies arranged language training (33% often and 53% occasionally). This is a significantly greater proportion than the levels returned by SMEs (49% offering training with 35% actually confirming training undertaken) and reflects no doubt the more fragile resource base of the SME.”
This comment supports the need for autonomous software tools that can be used at the employee's workstation rather than opting for or depending on more expensive teacher in class training.
5.1.2 Language Buddies.
Another application of the Assistant Programme could be in-house language practice between colleagues. This idea correlates with the practice of “language buddies” discussed in the report:
“Once more, as a function of scale, it is possible in some circumstances, to make semi-formal use of a language-skilled worker or a native speaker to support one with lower levels of language skills. Over 60% of the respondents were aware of such activity within their own company (often in tandem with in-or expatriation).”
Either via in-house practice but better still via a mutual help scheme between users in an inter-company or company-client relationship, we approximate the idea of the reporting phase in TBL and the sister programme feature of the Assistant Programmes discussed earlier.
5.1.3 Which languages?
The comment below supports the Assistant Programme sister software feature whereby employees of different native languages work with a tool offering language help in the their mother tongue.
“Many respondents indicated that they viewed English as a key language for gaining access to export markets and frequent reference was made to its use as a lingua franca. However, the survey results, as well as comments from individual company respondents, suggest that the picture is far more complex than the much-quoted view that English is the world Language [...] French is used to trade with partners in areas of Africa and Spanish is used similarly in Latin America.”
“Individual respondents mentioned that English might be used for initial market entry, but longer-term business partnerships depended upon relationshipbuilding and relationship-management and, to achieve this, cultural and linguistic knowledge of the target country were essential.”
This reaction mirrors that noted by Feely and Winslow in the Talking Sense survey.
“...We do know, both from our SME returns and from work on the earlier Talking Sense survey, that successful exporters recognise the value of using the customer's language as a basis for long-term relationship management and that complacency about the future dominance of English is increasingly coming under scrutiny.”
This duality is an essential element of the Assistant Programme philosophy; it enhances and promotes the option of knowledge and communication in the other language thereby avoiding issues of language or cultural superiority. This is especially true when native speakers of English are involved in business with non-native speakers of English and perhaps not so relevant when all employees are non-native speakers of English. In the latter case, language superiority is often avoided by using English as a lingua franca eg. Brenntag. Bilingual language use also facilitates comprehension on behalf of both users, as misunderstanding can be cleared up more efficiently if two language are being used and one is always the mother tongue of the sender.
5.1.4 Company reactions to translating machines.
Unfortunately for the promotion of an Assisted Programme, the Elan report points out the scepticism regarding the use of machine translation and web-based tools:
“Only 20% or respondents believed their company engaged in the use of machine translation and similar web-based language solutions. This reflects a residual mistrust of the technology which is still capable, if used unselectively, of producing hilarious mistranslations. It is perhaps not surprising that this was the area where the highest proportion of respondents recorded that their company had tried the approach and had abandoned it (37%).”
What has to be emphasised here is that the Assistant Programmes do not apply machine translation to provide written emails in the foreign language. Any limitations to the Assistant Programmes as a practical translation tool is directly related to the available corpora not due to translation errors. Theoretically, and if the Assistant Programme is correctly compiled, the user is aware of the limitations of this tool when a word or phrase search fails to provide the desired language element. This contrasts with machine translation, which allows users to insert any language they choose without any fore-warning of possible translation errors. Ultimately, this means that an Assistant Programme, although limited in corpus extension, will not supply the user with an inadequate or incorrect translation.
A second consideration when comparing an Assistant Programme with machine translation is the didactic feature. The only aspect of machine translation which could be considered educational must be the user's contemplation of the resulting translation and its comparison with the L1 version (a process hindered by the user's uncertainty as to the translation's validity!). The nature of an Assistant Programme will always mean that the extent of its corpora is finite but at the same time it encourages the user to learn more of the foreign language by exploring grammar, doing exercises and using the Trainer tool to provide controlled but authentic language practice. In short, an Assistant Programme does not profess to be a definitive and exhaustive translation tool as machine translation does but rather a learning tool where translation is provided as an outcome of that learning process. by Michael Bilbrough BA for doctorate studies at Seville University, Spain.
(This article is copyright Michael Bilbrough 2008. All rights reserved.)
Bibliography
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Selection of elemetary business English books (as evidence of low-level language text books dedicated to business English teaching):
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Taylor, Liz. “International Express” (pre-intermediate). Oxford University Press. (1998).
Allison, John “In Company” (elementary). Macmillan Publishers. (2004).
(This article is copyright Michael Bilbrough 2008. All rights reserved.)
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