Multilingual Users Research Articles

NILDE reloaded: a new system open to international interlibrary loan

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present new concepts and features introduced in NILDE 4.0, an online ILL and document supply request system designed for and used by more than 700 Italian libraries and research institutions. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use a case study approach based on their professional experience at the NILDE Administrator library, the CNR Research Area Library of Bologna. Findings – New concepts and features include, among others, a multilingual user interface, a Z39.50 link to national catalogues and union catalogues, a ranking algorithm to assist libraries in balancing their ILL borrowing and lending volumes with partner libraries, a single sign-on user authentication and authorisation system, and a bibliographic citation management system. Future development plans include the ability to create library groups; although this functionality is already built into the new system architecture, it has not yet been implemented by the community. Originality/value – The authors have published previously on earlier versions of the NILDE software; this paper presents an overview of the recently released version 4.0.

Participation, deliberate learning and discourses of learning online

This paper uses a study of the photo-sharing website Flickr to examine new online spaces for writing. On this site, people write titles and descriptions for their photos, they annotate their photos with semantic tags, they provide profiles of themselves and they comment on other people's photos. In these activities, people are engaging in new forms of writing and are extending their vernacular practices into new areas. This paper reports on a study which has analysed more than 100 Flickr sites and carried out interviews with 20 multilingual users of Flickr about their online practices. The paper investigates how people learn to participate in these new vernacular writing practices and contributes to theories of situated learning by developing them to take account of learning in online spaces. It focuses in particular on the ways in which Web 2.0 sites provide new spaces for learning and how people undertake deliberate projects of learning. The paper examines the ways in which people talk about the learning they are involved in and the specific discourses of learning they commonly draw upon. This changes over time as people identify new possibilities for themselves on Flickr.

Bridging languages in social networks: How multilingual users of Twitter connect language communities?

AbstractMultilingual users of social media and social networking sites are invisible —even unconscious— translators. Their language skills and multicultural background could help diminish the segmentation of information spheres online by connecting different language communities. Focusing on the microblogging site Twitter, this study aims at defining and classifying language bridges by looking at the languages and structure of the social networks of multilingual individuals. The social network analysis unveils four types of structures, one of which is defined as a language bridge. The next step of this work in progress aims at providing quantitative measures of this phenomenon, which has not been yet properly described or understood.

Assessing Multilingual Competencies: Adopting Construct Valid Assessment Policies

All assessment policies and practices are based on monolingual constructs whereby test‐takers are expected to demonstrate their language proficiency in one language at a time. Thus, the construct underlying these assessment approaches and/or scales (e.g., the CEFR) is of language as a closed and finite system that does not enable other languages to “smuggle in.” This view is in stark contrast to the current understanding of multilingual competencies for which various languages and aspects “bleed” into one another in creative ways as manifested by a growing number of users, especially immigrants, who are born into one language and acquire additional language(s), resulting in multilingual competencies. This is manifested in codeswitching and in the simultaneous use of different language functions (e.g., reading in one and speaking in another in the process of academic functioning). Yet, this multilingual functioning receives no attention in language testing practices. Further, multilingual users who rarely reach language proficiency in each of the languages that is identical to that of their monolingual counterparts are always being compared to them and thus receive lower scores. Consequently, they are penalized for their multilingual competencies, sending a message that multilingual knowledge is a liability. Given the current policies of cultivating multilingualism in schools and societies as expressed in the articles in this special issue, I critique the current monolingual assessment approaches within a political and social context. I argue that these approaches are rooted in nation‐state ideologies that are still attempting to promote national collective agendas of “wishful thinking” and ignore the reality of how languages are being used. This is followed by empirical data pointing to the cost of the continued use of monolingual tests for individual students, especially those who are bilingual, as is the case with immigrants. All of these will lead to initial proposals and examples for the adoption of different types of multilingual testing and assessment policies and practices in various contexts. These approaches, I argue, are more construct valid, as they enable the manifestation of fuller knowledge in integrated ways, thus highlighting the advantages, rather than the problems, that multilingual users possess.

Appraisal systems in L2 vs. L3 learning experiences

This article offers a comment on the ways multilingual language users perceive their L2 and L3 learning experiences at the level of appraisals, that is, variables that ‘assign value to current stimuli based on past experience’. In the theoretical part of the article the concept of appraisals is introduced and briefly outlined from the different perspectives of different existing taxonomies. Also a tool for measuring appraisal systems, the Geneva Appraisal Questionnaire (GAQ), is discussed in respect of its content and structure. This paper aims to compare experiences and factors involved in the development of L2 vs. L3 in two groups of multilinguals, as seen in their meaningful learning-related episodes (Group 1) and open-ended retrospective comments (Group 2). The comments are made in relation to appraisal values such as novelty, intrinsic pleasantness, coping potential and compatibility with norms and their significance in L2 vs. L3 learning processes, as expressed by the subjects in their responses to the GAQ categories (stimulus evaluation checks) and reflections.

Optimage central organised image quality control including statistics and reporting

Quality control of medical imaging systems is performed using dedicated phantoms. As the imaging systems are more and more digital, adequate image processing methods might help to save evaluation time and to receive objective results. The developed software package OPTIMAGE is focusing on this with a central approach: On one hand, OPTIMAGE provides a framework, which includes functions like database integration, DICOM data sources, multilingual user interface and image processing functionality. On the other hand, the test methods are implemented using modules which are able to process the images automatically for the common imaging systems. The integration of statistics and reporting into this environment is paramount: This is the only way to provide these functions in an interactive, user-friendly way. These features enable the users to discover degradation in performance quickly and document performed measurements easily.

A multilingual knowledge management system: A case study of FAO and WAICENT

This paper provides a case study of a multilingual knowledge management system for a large organization. In so doing we elicit what it means for a system to be “multilingual” and how that changes some previous research on knowledge management. Some researchers have viewed multilingual as meaning a multilingual user interface. However, that is only a small part of the story. In this case we find multilingual also refers to a broad range of “multilingual,” including multilingual knowledge resources, multilingual feedback from users, multilingual search, multilingual ontologies and other concerns.

User experiments with the Eurovision cross‐language image retrieval system

AbstractIn this article the authors present Eurovision, a text‐based system for cross‐language (CL) image retrieval. The system is evaluated by multilingual users for two search tasks with the system configured in English and five other languages. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first published set of user experiments for CL image retrieval. They show that (a) it is possible to create a usable multilingual search engine using little knowledge of any language other than English, (b) categorizing images assists the user's search, and (c) there are differences in the way users search between the proposed search tasks. Based on the two search tasks and user feedback, they describe important aspects of any CL image retrieval system.

Collaborative design of web service networks in a multilingual user community

This paper presents the WS–Talk (Web Service−Talk) interface layer, which is a structured natural language interface for the inter-service communication that extends the “find, bind, and execute” paradigm of web service interaction. This “open building block” can be implemented by both the service designers who, as providers, are more concerned with the architecture of the underlying service model and the service requesters who, as users, will seek to specify web services as solutions to specific problems. Through a semantic layer, WS–Talk transforms service descriptions or requests that have been expressed in natural language into task-specific web-serviced specifications. Whilst the objective of bringing together the service providers with relevant task-competent end-users in the architectural design of web service applications is, on the one hand, to build connected interoperable applications, on the other hand, the WS–Talk layer enables service requesters and providers to design and implement new ad hoc services or fine-tune existing ones.

LTC-Communicator: a web-based multilingual help desk

Software vendors operating in international markets face two problems : first, products must be localised to meet the requirements of each target country ; then there is the need to support diverse customers, where end-users may not speak the same language as the help desk. Localisation (new versions of screens, help text and documentation), while not cheap, is relatively well understood, with many companies providing expertise and tools. The problem of multilingual user support is much more complex, with few off-the-shelf solutions available. LTC-Communicator, a software product from the Language Technology Centre Ltd, offers an innovative and costeffective response to this growing need.

Using EuroWordNet within the Speech Operated System EMBASSI

In natural language processing, incremental semantic composition is one of the most prominent issues. In the past, numerous approaches have been developed for assigning meaning to noun and verb phrases and their complements and modifiers. However, their inferential power is often too weak to be applied to practical applications, or the expressiveness of the representation language is so complex, that it leads to intractable inference procedures. As an answer to these problems, we have developed an approach that relies on Description Logics (DL) for handling semantic construction. First, we will discuss this appraoch and show how a semantic knowledge base can be setup dependant on EUROWORDNET 1 (EWN) as a linguistic ontology. Subsequently we will outline our experience with and demands on EWN. 1 What is EMBASSI and its Objective? EMBASSI (”Elektronische Multimediale Bedienund Service-Assistenz”) has been http://www.illc.uva.nl/EuroWordNet/ a German joint project sponsored by the German Fed. Ministery of Research2. Our contribution to this project consists mainly of three components: the dialogue manager, formal ontologies for several multilingual application domains, and the language generation component to communicate system utterances to the user. The long-term goal of our research is to design and implement a generic dialogue system for rational (spoken) dialogues that helps a user to achieve certain goals in terms of operations of a technical application system – e.g. an information system, a system for controlling devices, or any other kind of problem solving systems. One of its design criteria is the ability to recognize users’ intentions in order to establish corresponding subgoals and control their processing. Furthermore, it should enable mixed-initiative, flexible and cooperative conversations, provide a high level of robustness as well as scalability at the linguistic and application dimensions, and easy portability to new domains. In addition, it should be possible to integrate multilingual linguistic interaction with multimodal It aims to provide easy access for everybody to complex technical systems (A/V home theatre, car devices, and public terminals), encouraging multimodal as well as multilingual user input. forms of input and output such as graphical user interfaces, and – by means of appropriate devices – the recognition of deictic actions. 2 DL Models of Applications Applications are characterized by a DL terminology which models the concepts used for making propositions about application situations. Basically, EMBASSI’s knowledge base is composed of two parts: the EWN ontology, which encodes the linguistic meaning of words determined on an empirical basis, and the STANDARD UPPER ONTOLOGY (SUMO) (NP01), which is used as a generic base model for concepts of the application domain (see (Lu02)). 3 Semantic Construction This section discusses the issue of semantic construction during analyzing natural language input. We are using an incremental approach to the composition of semantic representations. The backbone of our approach is -DRT (Fis96). The parser builds Discourse Representation Structures (DRSes) (KaR93) incrementally and maps them onto ABoxes3 (see (BLG02)). The main question here is how the mapping of domain independent in terms of EWN to application specific language usage in terms of a domain model is done. In the discourse domain, referents usually refer to instances in the application domain. Such pairs of a discourse referent and a corresponding inA general characteristic of DL-Systems is that the knowledge base is made up of two components: the intensional one, called TBox, and the extensional one, called ABox. TBox is a general schema characterizing the classes of individuals to be represented, their general properties and mutual relationships, while ABox is a partial instantiation of this schema, containing assertions relating either individuals to classes, or individuals to each other. So given a concept language L, an ABox-statement in L has one of the forms (DL96): C(a) Concept Membership Assertion R(a, b) Role Membership Assertion where C is an L-concept, R is an L-role, and a, b are individuals. stance are represented by means of a special role called has-lex. For instance, in the definition AvEvent has-lex Program1 it is claimed that an AvEvent4 is related to a discourse referent of Program1. Consequently, all words that are assigned Program1 as a meaning in EWN, designate an instance of AvEvent in the application domain. The DRS:

Development of the Crop Simulation System DIASPORA

Crop growth models are usually split into two opposite groups: complex comprehensive and simplified applied. The objective of this paper is to show how the different models can be used together to form an integrated crop modeling system. The software engineering methods that are employed include the needs of potential users in the system requirements. As a specific example, the process of development and implementation of an integrated crop simulation system, DIASPORA (DIAlog Simulator and PredictOr for Research in Agriculture), is described. The DIASPORA system is primarily designed to make more effective use of the field treatment data collected at the Lithuanian Institute of Agriculture (LIA) and to allow a multitasking application of crop growth and development models. To achieve these tasks, a simulation environment has been developed that includes the complex simulation model, model database, multilingual user interface, and the set of simplified models for particular applications. Three local research stations of the LIA—Traku Voke (south‐eastern Lithuania), Dotnuva (central Lithuania), and Vezhaichai (western Lithuania)—serve as sources of experimental information, and therefore, as sites for further implementation of the system. The models of cereal crops implemented within the system have also been verified using experimental data sets from several regions in Russia; Gornyj Lozen in Bulgaria; and Morris, MN, USA.

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC CONTROL OF TRANSLATIONS WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE ACTIVITIES OF THE INTERNATIONAL TRANSLATIONS CENTRE

Multilingual user guides, manuals and thesauri, and more linguistically universal classification schemes need to be produced to help overcome the language barrier when searching for references. Such developments however would be of only limited value unless the full document can be made available in a language known to the user. In some countries centres have been founded to provide help with the identification of existing translations, these centres include the International Translation Centre. Published translations include translated books reports and journals while unpublished translations are those which are completed on an ad hoc basis. Bibliographic control is achieved by listing in abstracting/indexing journals or on bibliographic data bases. Publications including Journals in Translation for translated journals and World Transindex for ad hoc translations, can be used to trace the existence of a translation. The availability of the translated document itself varies according to the two types of translations. Published translations are reasonably accessible while ad hoc translations are scattered over many libraries and translating agencies. Libraries can help at both the stage of acquiring the reference and identifying and obtaining the documents.

Euronet‐DIANE: a study on the harmonisation of user manuals

Up to 25 hosts will eventually make approximately 150 databases available on Euronet‐DIANE. If European users are to benefit from, rather than be totally confused by this massive store of information they must be educated, trained and supported in their efforts to exploit it. The common command set is already with us, as are multilingual thesauri and many other user aids for bibliographic retrieval systems. User manuals, however, present a confused picture to the user because they exhibit such a wide variation in content, structure and design. This paper summarises the recommendations of a study on the harmonisation of user manuals carried out under contract to the Commission of the European Communities as part of the Euronet‐DIANE project.