Multilingual Websites Research Articles

Communication needs in circumvention medical tourism: Multilingual websites of abortion clinics

Communication needs in circumvention medical tourism: Multilingual websites of abortion clinics

Development of Proposed Heuristics for Evaluating Multilingual Website Usability

The number of multilingual websites and interfaces grows as the world becomes more globalized. However, there is a lack of heuristics available to easily evaluate these websites and interfaces. While well-known usability heuristics like Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics have served as an industry basis for heuristic evaluations, they fall short of providing full considerations for multilingual systems. This paper proposes multilingual usability heuristics that can be used with existing usability heuristic sets to conduct heuristic evaluations on multilingual websites. We used U.S. Internal Revenue Service applications accessed in Korean and English to test the proposed Multilingual Usability Heuristics. We updated the Multilingual Usability Heuristics based on the results these evaluations. Our final set contains 6 heuristics that can be used in tandem with other heuristic sets, like Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics. Though they are not yet empirically validated, these heuristics are useful in evaluating multilingual website and graphical user interfaces.

Research on the Enhancement of Urban Image through Foreign Language Services in the Context of Digital Humanities: A Case Study of Shaoxing

The study focuses on foreign language services in the context of digital humanities and explores how they can empower urban image enhancement. Taking Shaoxing as an example, it analyzes the role of foreign language services in shaping the city's image and proposes strategies to optimize these services. These strategies include creating multilingual city promotional materials, developing multilingual websites and social media platforms, and utilizing digital means to improve service quality. The aim is to enhance the urban image of Shaoxing and strengthen its international competitiveness. This research has implications for image enhancement in other cities and provides new ideas and approaches for the innovative development of foreign language services in China's digital humanities context.

Language awareness and cultural awareness in international online cooperation: a mixed-method approach

This paper reports on research conducted within the frame of an international online cooperation between Germany and Israel (CoGI). Diverse, multilingual student groups co-construct multilingual websites on educational initiatives. The aim is to raise prospective teachers’ language awareness (LA) and cultural awareness (CA) for cooperation in international contexts. 75 students and five instructors from four different campuses in Germany and Israel took part in the project in 2019. Individual and cooperative learning was combined with online and face-to-face as well as student conference learning. A mixed-method approach was used to investigate the effects of the 10-week cooperation with respect to the emergence of LA and CA as well as perceived language proficiency. The results show a significant increase in participants’ perceived English language proficiency and CA. The qualitative analyses give evidence of co-constructive group cooperation which revealed LA and CA in the process of negotiating shared understanding. The study highlights the importance of international online cooperation in teacher education.

Lokalizacija, transkreacija in trženje

The transfer of communication from one country to another requires a particular approach to translation. It also requires interdisciplinary skills based on language, culture, communication, technology and increasingly marketing, especially for the translation of multilingual websites or advertising texts. This is called localization and transcreation; and both fields face economic challenges. Using specific translation strategies, localization aims to adapt a product to different markets from a commercial point of view. Transcreation is a creative translation that relates to the field of advertising and marketing. It makes it possible to preserve the original meaning of the message while adapting it to the target culture. Qualitative research allows us to describe new translation trends and strategies, focusing on the relationship between translation and marketing, including the adaptation of websites and advertising slogans. To this end, we have examined localization and transcreation services offered by some Slovenian and foreign translation agencies that provide online services.

Migrants’ access to COVID-19 vaccination in Japan: Progress and challenges

ObjectivesThis study aimed to review the progress and challenges of COVID-19 vaccine roll-out for migrants in Japan and discuss the approaches to address the challenges and better prepare for future waves of COVID-19 and other pandemics. MethodsWe conducted a literature review using an assessment framework which we developed building upon existing frameworks and tools on access to health services and COVID-19 vaccination among migrants. ResultsCOVID-19 vaccination coverage among foreigners might be lower than that of nationals although the data on foreigners were not widely available. A gap appeared to exist between the government's efforts to disseminate vaccine-related information through multi-lingual websites and migrant communities as recipients. A series of barriers for migrants were identified at different stages of the vaccination process. While efforts were made by different units of local governments, NGOs, migrant communities, and international exchange associations, linkages across sectors and scaling-up appeared to be an issue. No foreigners were explicitly excluded from the entitlements of COVID-19 vaccination. The national level guidance, however, allowed sub-national levels to make a decision on whether or not undocumented foreigners should be reported to the immigration office or law enforcement when providing the services. In consequence, units in charge of public health and vaccination of some municipalities did not offer vaccination to those in need. ConclusionMigrants, especially those unregistered face various barriers in accessing COVID-19 vaccination. It is critical to assess and address challenges concerning channels of information dissemination, pathways to access services, obstacles for vulnerable migrants, and data for evidence-based actions.

Improving the lives of ethnically diverse family carers and people living with dementia using digital media resources - Protocol for the Draw-Care randomised controlled trial.

Ethnically diverse family carers of people living with dementia (hereafter carers and people with dementia) experience more psychological distress than other carers. To reduce this inequality, culturally adapted, multilingual, evidence-based practical assistance is needed. This paper details the Draw-Care study protocol including a randomised control trial (RCT) to test the effectiveness of a digital intervention comprising a multilingual website, virtual assistant, animated films, and information, on the lives of carers and people with dementia in Australia. The Draw-Care intervention will be evaluated in a 12-week active waitlist parallel design RCT with 194 carers from Arabic, Cantonese, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish, Tamil, and Vietnamese-speaking language groups. Our intervention was based on the World Health Organization's (WHO) iSupport Lite online carer support messages and was co-designed with carers, people with dementia, service providers, and clinicians. Culturally adapted multilingual digital resources were created in nine languages and English. In Phase I (2022), six co-design workshops with stakeholders and interviews with people with dementia informed the development of the intervention which will be trialled and evaluated in Phases II and III (2023 and 2024). Digital media content is a novel approach to providing cost-effective access to health care information. This study protocol details the three study phases including the RCT of a co-designed, culturally adapted, multilingual, digital intervention for carers and people with dementia to advance the evidence in dementia and digital healthcare research and help meet the needs of carers and people with dementia in Australia and globally.

Multilingualism and the management of small and medium-sized enterprises: the case of Sicilian firm websites and related localisation strategies

According to the ELAN1 report, European firms lose a significant amount of revenue due to unsuccessful transactions, as a result of inadequate linguistic skills and intercultural competence, reinforcing the idea that multilingualism is still perceived as a communication barrier. In Italy, small and medium firms show a marked preference for website translations, even if, as pointed out by PIMLICO research in 2011, it is not possible to define these products as multilingual websites or localised ones. Firms show a tendency to reduce investments in foreign languages and to simplify the hiring processes of employees, since they prefer to rely on external services rather than providing training courses or hire specialists. Referring to this background of references and the evidence that emerged from an online questionnaire submitted to Sicilian small and medium firms (Di Gregorio and Benzo, 2016), the aim of this paper is to investigate the choices of firms to localise websites as part of a comprehensive linguistic policy.

European Union Digital Passenger Locator Form System (EUdPLF) development

IntroductionPassenger Locator Forms (PLFs) are used by public health authorities to facilitate international contact tracing. Digital PLFs (dPLF) allows for easier, more rapid data collection and exchange between stakeholders, making international contact tracing more effective and efficient. In response to COVID-19, EU HEALTHY GATEWAYS developed a common European Union digital Passenger Locator Form System (EUdPLF) for all transport sectors (aircrafts, cruise ships/ferries and ground transport).MethodsA working group was established consisting of 9 EUMS, EASA, EMSA, ECDC, IATA, ERA, CLIA EUROPE. A minimum mandatory dataset was developed. Personal data protection procedures and security measures were implemented. Interconnection of EUdPLF with the EASA exchange platform allowing exchange of data between MS with national dPLF and MS using the EUdPLF was completed. Pilot testing was conducted with four MS for the air and ferry sector.ResultsThe EUdPLF system developed consists of a multilingual website being the first point of information for users and the EUdPLF app which is the web app for completion of the dPLF. One dPLF is completed per family/group, a QR code is generated and dPLF is sent to the passenger's email. Pilot testing generated 1013 PLFs submissions and 1450 passenger registrations. Feedback received was positive and used to improve user experience. To date, Italy is officially using the EUdPLF for all arriving passengers for all modes of transport. France, Slovenia, Lithuania and Austria are finalising practicalities before official use and testing of the system is ongoing with other MS.ConclusionsEUdPLF provides multilingual, user-friendly, secure and GDPR compliant single entry point and database for the collection of PLFs, flexible to be customised to the MS needs and to be connected to external systems e.g. check-in system of transport operators, vaccination/testing/certificate information systems of each MS.

The radiographer's perspective on X-ray examinations in potentially pregnant patients; results of a focus group study among Dutch radiographers

IntroductionThe Netherlands does not have a national guideline for performing radiographic examinations on pregnant patients. Radiographic examination is a generic term for all examinations performed using ionizing radiation, including but not limited to radiographs, fluoroscopy and computed tomography. A pilot study amongst radiographers (Medical Radiation Technologists (MRTs)) showed that standardized practice of radiographic examinations on pregnant women is not evident between Radiology departments and that there is a need for a national guideline as the varying practice methods may lead to confusion and uncertainty amongst both patients and MRTs. MethodsFocus groups consisting of MRTs from several Radiology departments within the Netherlands were used to map ideas and requirements as to what should be included in the national guideline. Nine focus group sessions were organized with a total of 52 participants. Using a previous review (Wit, Fleur; Vroonland, Colinda; Bijwaard H. Pre-natal X-ray exposure and the risk of developing paediatric cancer; a systematic review of risk factors and a comparison of international guidelines. Health Physics 2021; 121 (3):225–233), the following key points were chosen as discussion topics for the focus group sessions: dose reduction, confirming pregnancy and risk communication. ResultsResults showed that the participating MRTs did not agree on the use of lead aprons. That the national guideline should include standardized methods to adjust parameters to decrease radiation dose. Focus group participants find it difficult to ask a patient's pregnancy status, especially when dealing with relatively young and old (er) patients. When communicating the level of risk associated with a radiographic examination the participating MRTs would like to be able to use examples and comparisons, preferably by means of a multilingual website. ConclusionA national guideline must include information on justification, available alternatives, dose reductions methods and confirmation of pregnancy requirements when fetal dose is a significant risk. Implications for practiceA national guideline ensures standardized practice can be implemented in Radiology departments, increasing clarity of the issues for both patients and MRTs.

Did You Try Our Good Smoked Ham? Assessing the Quality of Translation as Cross-Cultural Mediation on Croatian Tourist Board Websites

Tourist discourse has been recognized as a specialized type of cross-cultural communication. Thus, successful translation of tourist texts assumes that translators act as cross-cultural mediators on a number of levels. The rather low quality of translation in the tourism sector has been pointed out by several Translation Studies scholars. However, not much systematic empirical research on the quality of translation in this sector has been carried out. This paper analyses a corpus of multilingual websites produced by Croatian tourist boards. In the analysis of the data I rely on the criteria for assessing translation quality of web translation developed by Pierini (2007), and place a special focus on the achievement of pragmatic level equivalence between source and target texts as a major criterion of successful cross-cultural communication in the translation of tourism discourse.

Perception, Attitudes, and Experiences Regarding Mental Health Problems and Web Based Mental Health Information Amongst Young People with and without Migration Background in Germany. A Qualitative Study.

Mental illnesses in adolescence and young adulthood are steadily increasing. Thus, mental disorders represent an individual and societal challenge and an enormous health economic burden, creating an urgent need for research and action. Mental health problems are omnipresent in the life of young people and the internet is the first resource, which helps them to understand their situation. Young people with migration background often have more difficulties accessing health care services. Digital technologies offer an ideal opportunity for a low-threshold platform that addresses the needs of young people. The current project “GeKo:mental” aims to design a multilingual website for Cologne-based adolescents and young adults that will enable them to obtain comprehensive information about mental illness and health, treatment options and first contact points. To design this website, this study aims to find out what kind of health information is needed and how it should best be presented. Nine focus group discussions with adolescents and young adults with and without migration background (N = 68) were conducted; the focus group discussions took place at schools, in an association for social youth work and in an cultural association, which is linked to a mosque in Cologne, Germany. A qualitative content analysis was conducted on the gathered material. The participants reported concrete challenges and needs. The results will form the basis for the development and design of a website.

Analysis of Linguistically and Culturally Tailored Initiatives in Websites of Kidney Transplant Programs in the United States Between 2013-2018

Minority patients constitute the majority of the kidney transplant waiting list, yet they suffer greater difficulties in listing and longer wait times to transplantation. There is a lack of information regarding targeted efforts by transplant centers to improve transplant care for minority populations. Our aim was to analyze all kidney transplant websites in the United States to identify changes over a 5-year period in the number of multilingual websites, reported culturally targeted initiatives, and center and provider diversity. Surveys were developed to analyze center websites of all transplant programs in the United States. Those with incomplete information about their nephrology or surgical teams were excluded, resulting in 174 (73%) sites in 2013 and 185 (76%) in 2018. Results: Few websites were available in a language other than English, 6.3% in 2013 and 9.7% in 2018 (P = 0.24). Only 3 websites (1.3%) in 2013 and 7 (3.7%) in 2018 reported any evidence of a culturally targeted initiative (P = 0.23). In 2018, 35% of centers employed a Hispanic transplant physician, 77% had a transplant physician who spoke a language other than English, and 39% had a transplant physician who spoke Spanish. Although minority patients are expected to grow in the United States, decreased access to transplantation continues to vex the transplant community. Very little progress has been made in the development of multilingual websites and culturally targeted initiatives.

COVID-19 Translated: WHO’s and the City of Ottawa English and Arabic Narrative of the Pandemic

Many national and international organizations have constructed and disseminated COVID-19 public narrative and have contributed into the construction of the pandemic meta-narrative. The World Health Organization (henceforth WHO) is the international organization responsible for publishing COVID-19 related information to global audiences and citizens. However, the City of Ottawa is the Canadian federal capital responsible for disseminating information about the pandemic to its citizens who reside in Ottawa. In the light of the evolving events, this paper explores the English and Arabic public narrative of COVID-19 as constructed and published by WHO on its multilingual website and by the City of Ottawa Public Health in Canada. In specific, it scrutinizes how similar or different the communicative messages and meanings are as embedded in the English and Arabic texts of the pandemic public narrative. To do so, this paper methodologically utilizes a qualitative narrative analysis research design guided by narrative theory, types of narrative, and narrative features. Accordingly, the corpus consists of 48 English texts and their 48 Arabic translated texts which were published on WHO’s website under two COVID-19 pandemic topics: “Myth busters” and “Q & As on coronaviruses (COVID-19)”. As well, this paper analyses 12 English texts and their 12 Arabic translated texts which were published on the City of Ottawa’s website. The findings of this paper provide further understanding of similarities and differences in communicative messages and meanings as embedded in the English and Arabic public narrative of COVID-19 pandemic, and as published and represented by WHO and the City of Ottawa.

In favour of or against multi-lingual Q&A sites? Exploring the evidence from user and knowledge perspectives

ABSTRACT Many Q&A sites initially run only in English, and then gradually release their multi-lingual variants to serve users who speak other languages. The launch of such multi-lingual sites always lead to an intense dispute about the pros and cons of multi-lingual sites. Although all arguments and concerns sound reasonable, people can rarely provide solid evidence to convince each other. In this paper, from users' comments about the launch of several non-English Stack Overflow sites, we first identify three major concerns including community split, knowledge needs and interests in other languages, and knowledge fragmentation and duplication. To validate these three concerns, we conduct an evidence-based data analysis and comparison of user characteristics, tag usage and cross-site links between the Russian Stack Overflow and the English Stack Overflow on these three concerns. Our study sheds light on the existence value and risks of multi-lingual Q&A sites.

Adoption of Multilingual State Emergency Management Websites: Responsiveness to the Risk Communication Needs of a Multilingual Society

ABSTRACT This article draws on the risk communication and responsiveness literature for theoretical context to investigate the adoption of multilingual websites at state emergency management agencies. It analyzes the 50 state websites on their multilingual presence of emergency-related information available to the public. It uses a binary logistic regression to model the determinants of their multilingual e-government usage for risk communication. The study reveals that state emergency management agencies adopt multilingual websites (1) to be responsive to the needs of populations who may not speak English, (2) to reduce state and immigrant vulnerability to disasters through effective risk communication, and finally (3) when better economic conditions prevail in their states. The study also supports the idea that public administrators are not driven by prevailing political and ideological sentiments in the states when making policies to communicate risk. By adopting multilingual websites, states are demonstrating that a multilingual society constitutes an important collective voice.

Participatory practice with queer refugees in Germany

Abstract Evidence shows that queer refugees in Germany neither have equal access to the health system, information, HIV-Testing and treatment, nor are they involved in HIV-Prevention. The community-based participatory health approach provides a valuable tool for building capacity and enabling queer refugees to create knowledge and develop appropriate prevention tools for their communities. “Your health, your rights” (2017-2018) is a 2-year community-based participatory health project, which aims to improve the involvement of queer refugees in HIV-Prevention, as well as to create appropriate prevention media in collaborative way. It is conducted by the National AIDS Organization in collaboration with partners from different immigrant organisations, queer refugees and AIDS service organisations - all based in Berlin. The components of the project include a multilingual participatory need assessment workshop, a series of capacity-building methodological workshops, a community-led art-based project and a participatory evaluation. 12 queer refuges choose to take part in the project and have been supported to document their lived experiences using community and concept mapping. Key topics and needs connected to sexual health have been jointly identified. Based on these results and in the framework of an art-based workshop participants created a design of multilingual website for queer refugees which delivers helpful information in appropriate way (www.queerrefugeeswelcome.de). The involvement of queer refugees in HIV-Prevention is possible, if it is enabled. The usage of participatory visual methods has opened up ways of participation of even highly traumatised refugees who otherwise are not able to verbally express their thoughts and enabled the communication between participants who don’t share the same language. Key messages The resources of queer refugees are identified and mobilised and community building processes are supported. The participants improved their competencies (empowerment). Service providers are able to tailor their services better to the needs of queer refugees.

Misalignment Detection for Web-Scraped Corpora: A Supervised Regression Approach

To build state-of-the-art Neural Machine Translation (NMT) systems, high-quality parallel sentences are needed. Typically, large amounts of data are scraped from multilingual web sites and aligned into datasets for training. Many tools exist for automatic alignment of such datasets. However, the quality of the resulting aligned corpus can be disappointing. In this paper, we present a tool for automatic misalignment detection (MAD). We treated the task of determining whether a pair of aligned sentences constitutes a genuine translation as a supervised regression problem. We trained our algorithm on a manually labeled dataset in the FR–NL language pair. Our algorithm used shallow features and features obtained after an initial translation step. We showed that both the Levenshtein distance between the target and the translated source, as well as the cosine distance between sentence embeddings of the source and the target were the two most important features for the task of misalignment detection. Using gold standards for alignment, we demonstrated that our model can increase the quality of alignments in a corpus substantially, reaching a precision close to 100%. Finally, we used our tool to investigate the effect of misalignments on NMT performance.

Equal Access to Health Information: Evaluating the Use of a Multilingual Website in Face-To-Face Consultations, Language Support, Multilingual Website, Sexual and Reproductive Health Consultations

Abstract: In a 21st century superdiverse world, public service providers increasingly resort to technologies facilitating face-to-face consultations. In this paper, we evaluate the use and efficiency of a multilingual website in 11 video-recorded consultations of HIV/STI counselling. We address three central research questions: (i) How is the multilingual website embedded (or not) in the consultations? (ii) For what particular communicative purposes? (iii) How are the interactional routines shaped by the use of the multilingual website? The results show that the website is most efficient in consultations characterized by high levels of institution-specific arrangements of talk enabling varying tasks, e.g. announcing the taking of a HIV test, asking the patient’s consent for taking a HIV test, exploring sexual risk behaviours and infections, empowering the patient in the search for reliable information on sexual health related topics.Resumen: En un contexto de superdiversidad, los proveedores de servicios públicos recurren cada vez más a tecnologías para facilitar los encuentros multilingües. En este artículo evaluamos el uso y la eficiencia de un sitio web mediante el análisis de 11 consultas sobre VIH/ETS. Abordamos tres preguntas de investigación: (i) ¿Cómo se incluye (o no) el sitio web multilingüe en las consultas? (ii) ¿Con qué fines comunicativos? (iii) ¿Qué efectos tiene el sitio web en las rutinas de interacción? Los resultados muestran que el sitio web es más eficiente en consultas con organizaciones conversacionales específicas y propias de la institución. Así, el sitio facilita comunicar la realización de una prueba VIH, solicitar el consentimiento del paciente para realizarla, explorar conductas sexuales de riesgo, y capacitar al paciente en la búsqueda de información fiable sobre temas relacionados con la salud sexual.

LOCALIZATION OF WEBSITE VERBAL CONTENT INTO ENGLISH AS A MARKETING STRATEGY

Цель. На сегодняшний день необходимость локализации онлайн-ресурсов обусловлена глобализирующей тенденцией развития интернет-коммуникации. Стратегии локализации варьируются в зависимости от характера реализуемых посредством интернет-платформ продуктов и услуг, однако в любом случае локализованные версии предоставляют потенциальным клиентам доступ к достоверным источникам информации о мировых брендах. Целью настоящего исследования является изучение феномена локализации с лингвистической точки зрения применительно к вербальному контенту международных сайтов. В статье предпринимается попытка обоснования необходимости дифференции англоязычного контента для каждой из англоязычных стран, включенных в структуру локализованных версий сайтов, и выявить вербальные средства, за счет которых осуществляется данный процесс.Методология проведения работы. Основу исследования образуют методы контекстуального, сравнительного и прагматического анализа.Результаты. В результате проведенного исследования были описаны механизмы создания локализованного контента в рамках одного сайта и в пространстве одного языка – английского. В статье делается вывод о значимости локализации сайта и текста, в частности, на английский язык и о необходимости дифференциации между двумя уровнями, на которых может осуществляться локализация – уровень текста и интертекстуальный уровень.Область применения результатов. Результаты исследования могут быть применены в сфере осуществления масштабных проектов локализации различных видов международных сайтов.