Assessing the Impact of Real-Time Machine Translation on Multilingual Meetings in Global Software Projects

Communication in global software development is hindered by language differences in countries with a lack of English speaking professionals. Machine translation is a technology that uses software to translate from one natural language to another. The progress of machine translation systems has been steady in the last decade. As for now, machine translation technology is particularly appealing because it might be used, in the form of cross-language chat services, in countries that are entering into global software projects. However, despite the recent progress of the technology, we still lack a thorough understanding of how real-time machine translation affects communication. In this paper, we present a set of empirical studies with the goal of assessing to what extent real-time machine translation can be used in distributed, multilingual requirements meetings instead of English. Results suggest that, despite far from 100% accurate, real-time machine translation is not disruptive of the conversation flow and, therefore, is accepted with favor by participants. However, stronger effects can be expected to emerge when language barriers are more critical. Our findings add to the evidence about the recent advances of machine translation technology and provide some guidance to global software engineering practitioners in regarding the losses and gains of using English as a lingua franca in multilingual group communication, as in the case of computer-mediated requirements meetings

An Empirical Simulation-based Study of Real-Time Speech Translation for Multilingual Global Project Teams

ABSTRACT Context: Real-time speech translation technology is today available but still lacks a complete understanding of how such technology may affect communication in global software projects. Goal: To investigate the adoption of combining speech recognition and machine translation in order to overcome language barriers among stakeholders who are remotely negotiating software requirements. Method: We performed an empirical simulation-based study including: Google Web Speech API and Google Translate service, two groups of four subjects, speaking Italian and Brazilian Portuguese, and a test set of 60 technical and non-technical utterances. Results: Our findings revealed that, overall: (i) a satisfactory accuracy in terms of speech recognition was achieved, although significantly affected by speaker and utterance differences; (ii) adequate translations tend to follow accurate transcripts, meaning that speech recognition is the most critical part for speech translation technology. Conclusions: Results provide a positive albeit initial evidence towards the possibility to use speech translation technologies to help globally distributed team members to communicate in their native languages

Interpreting

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount cultural identity. The default mode of interpreting shows a desire for speed that suppresses differences requiring cultural mediation. It is theorized this imbalance stems from the invention and implementation of simultaneous interpreting within a highly charged historical moment that was steeped in trauma. Interpreting as a professional practice developed in keeping with technological capacities and historical contingencies accompanying processes of industrialization and modernity. The resulting expectations about what interpreting can and cannot achieve play out in microsocial group dynamics (as inequality) and macrosocial policy (legalized injustice). Interpreting invites an encounter with difference: foreignization is embedded within the experience of participating in simultaneous interpretation because interpreting disrupts the accustomed flow of consciousness, forcing participants to adapt (or resist adapting) to an alternate rhythm of turn-taking. This results in an unusual awareness of time. Discomforts associated with heightened time-consciousness open possibilities for deep learning and new kinds of relationships among people, ideas, and problem-setting. An analysis of the frustrations of users (interpretees) and practitioners (interpreters) suggests the need for other remedies than complete domestication. Reframing training for interpreters, and cultivating skillful and strategic participation by interpretees, could be leveraged systematically to improve social equality and reduce intercultural tensions through a balanced emphasis on sharing understanding and creating mutually-relevant meanings. This comparative cultural and critical discourse analysis enables an action research/action learning hypothesis aimed at intercultural social resilience: social control of diversity can be calibrated and contained through rituals of participation in special practices of simultaneously-interpreted communication

MEReq: A Tool to Capture and Validate Multi-Lingual Requirements

Within the era of globalisation that acknowledges differences and diversity, multiple languages have been increasingly used to capture requirements. This practice is particularly prevalent in Malaysia, where both Malay and English languages are used as a media of communication. Nevertheless, capturing requirements in multiple languages is often error-prone due to natural language imprecision being compounded by language differences. Considering that two languages may be used to describe requirements for the same system in different ways, we were motivated to develop MEReq, a tool which uses Essential Use Case (EUC) models to support capturing and checking the inconsistency occurring in English and Malay multi-lingual requirements. MEReq is tablet compatible to minimise time for on-site capture and validation of multi-lingual requirements. This paper describes the MEReq approach and demonstrates its use to capture and validate English and Malay requirements

The European Language Resources and Technologies Forum: Shaping the Future of the Multilingual Digital Europe

Proceedings of the 1st FLaReNet Forum on the European Language Resources and Technologies, held in Vienna, at the Austrian Academy of Science, on 12-13 February 2009

Access to recorded interviews: A research agenda

Recorded interviews form a rich basis for scholarly inquiry. Examples include oral histories, community memory projects, and interviews conducted for broadcast media. Emerging technologies offer the potential to radically transform the way in which recorded interviews are made accessible, but this vision will demand substantial investments from a broad range of research communities. This article reviews the present state of practice for making recorded interviews available and the state-of-the-art for key component technologies. A large number of important research issues are identified, and from that set of issues, a coherent research agenda is proposed

24th Bilateral Student Workshop CTU Prague and HTW Dresden - User Interfaces & Visualization

This technical report publishes the proceedings of the 24th Bilateral Student Workshop CTU Prague and HTW Dresden -User Interfaces & Visualization-, which was held on the 26th November 2021. The workshop offers a possibility for young scientists to present their current research work in the fields of computer graphics, human-computer-interaction, robotics and usability. The works is meant as a platform to bring together researchers from both the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) and the University of Applied Sciences Dresden (HTW). The German Academic Exchange Service offers its financial support to allow student participants the bilateral exchange between Prague and Dresden.:1) Robot assisted reminiscence therapy for people with dementia, p.4 2) VENT-CONECT: System for remote monitoring of instruments used in intensive care, p.12 3) Conversational assistant for smart home, p.17 4) Perspectives and challenges of the research project ”SYNC ID” , p.23 5) Music-based emotional biofeedback: the state of the art and challenges, p.26 6) Ambient Assisted Living Lab - Smart Systems and CoCreation, p.30 7) Board Game Playing and Consuming Beverages in VR, p.36 8) An approach to measure and increase the level of participation of people with dementia in cognitive games, p.41 9) Forced perspective illusions and scaling users in VR - state of the art., p.47 10) Training Deep Learning Models for Punctuation Prediction, p.51 11) Towards an Evaluation of Ambiguity in Point-Feature Labelling, p.56 12) The ReZA method goes digital, p.60 13) Haptic interface for spatial audio web player, p.6

Multilingual Information Access: Practices and Perceptions of Bi/multilingual Academic Users

The research reported in this dissertation explored linguistic determinants in online information searching, and examined to what extent bi/multilingual academic users utilize Multilingual Information Access (MLIA) tools and what impact these have on their information searching behavior. The aim of the study was three-pronged: to provide tangible data that can support recommendations for the effective user-centered design of Multilingual Information Retrieval (MLIR) systems; to provide a user-centered evaluation of existing MLIA tools, and to offer the basis of a framework for Library & Information Science (LIS) professionals in teaching information literacy and library skills for bi/multilingual academic users. In the first phase of the study, 250 bi/multilingual students participated in a web survey that investigated their language choices while searching for information on the internet and electronic databases. 31 of these participants took part in the second phase which involved a controlled lab-based user experiment and post experiment questionnaire that investigated their use of MLIA tools on Google and WorldCat and their opinions of these tools. In the third phase, 19 students participated in focus groups discussions and 6 librarians were interviewed to find out their perspectives on multilingual information literacy. Results showed that though machine translation has alleviated some of the linguistic related challenges in online information searching, language barriers do still exist for some users especially at the query formulation stage. Captures from the experiment revealed great diversity in the way MLIA tools were utilized while the focus group discussions and interviews revealed a general lack of awareness by both librarians and students of the tools that could help enhance and promote multilingual information literacy. The study highlights the roles of both IR system designers as well as LIS professionals in enhancing and promoting multilingual information access and literacy: User- centered design, user-modeling were found to be key aspects in the development of more effective multilingual information retrieval (MLIR) systems. The study also highlights the distinction between being multilingually information literate and being multilingual information literate. Suitable models for instruction for bi/multilingual academic users point towards Specialized Information Literacy Instruction (SILI) and Personalized Information Literacy Instruction (PILI)