An evaluation of the challenges of Multilingualism in Data Warehouse development

In this paper we discuss Business Intelligence and define what is meant by support for Multilingualism in a Business Intelligence reporting context. We identify support for Multilingualism as a challenging issue which has implications for data warehouse design and reporting performance. Data warehouses are a core component of most Business Intelligence systems and the star schema is the approach most widely used to develop data warehouses and dimensional Data Marts. We discuss the way in which Multilingualism can be supported in the Star Schema and identify that current approaches have serious limitations which include data redundancy and data manipulation, performance and maintenance issues. We propose a new approach to enable the optimal application of multilingualism in Business Intelligence. The proposed approach was found to produce satisfactory results when used in a proof-of-concept environment. Future work will include testing the approach in an enterprise environmen

MLED_BI: A Novel Business Intelligence Design Approach to Support Multilingualism

With emerging markets and expanding international cooperation, there is a requirement to support Business Intelligence (BI) applications in multiple languages, a process which we refer to as Multilingualism (ML). ML in BI is understood in this research as the ability to store descriptive content (such as descriptions of attributes in BI reports) in more than one language at Data Warehousing (DWH) level and to use this information at presentation level to provide reports, queries or dashboards in more than one language. Design strategies for data warehouses are typically based on the assumption of a single language environment. The motivations for this research are the design and performance challenges encountered when implementing ML in a BI data warehouse environment. These include design issues, slow response times, delays in updating reports and changing languages between reports, the complexity of amending existing reports and the performance overhead. The literature review identified that the underlying cause of these problems is that existing approaches used to enable ML in BI are primarily ad-hoc workarounds which introduce dependency between elements and lead to excessive redundancy. From the literature review, it was concluded that a satisfactory solution to the challenge of ML in BI requires a design approach based on data independence the concept of immunity from changes and that such a solution does not currently exist. This thesis presents MLED_BI (Multilingual Enabled Design for Business Intelligence). MLED_BI is a novel design approach which supports data independence and immunity from changes in the design of ML data warehouses and BI systems. MLED_BI extends existing data warehouse design approaches by revising the role of the star schema and introducing a ML design layer to support the separation of language elements. This also facilitates ML at presentation level by enabling the use of a ML content management system. Compared to existing workarounds for ML, the MLED_BI design approach has a theoretical underpinning which allows languages to be added, amended and deleted without requiring a redesign of the star schema; provides support for the manipulation of ML content; improves performance and streamlines data warehouse operations such as ETL (Extract, Transform, Load). Minor contributions include the development of a novel BI framework to address the limitations of existing BI frameworks and the development of a tool to evaluate changes to BI reporting solutions. The MLED_BI design approach was developed based on the literature review and a mixed methods approach was used for validation. Technical elements were validated experimentally using performance metrics while end user acceptance was validated qualitatively with end users and technical users from a number of countries, reflecting the ML basis of the research. MLED_BI requires more resources at design and initial implementation stage than existing ML workarounds but this is outweighed by improved performance and by the much greater flexibility in ML made possible by the data independence approach of MLED_BI. The MLED_BI design approach enhances existing BI design approaches for use in ML environments

Student Identity Disclosed: Analysis of an Online Student Profile Tool

In the University of Minnesota’s Student Writing Support program, we gather, record, and share student and course information in order to support consultants in their work with writers; to assess and improve our own practice; and to make compelling, datadriven arguments for the center’s continued existence. Recognizing moments when these data-collection practices worked against the relationships we wanted to build with student writers, we began to critique these practices, with the goal of creating more intentional criteria and methods for soliciting client information. In Fall 2013, we developed and introduced an online Student Profile tool where clients could indicate their preferred name, provide a guide to pronouncing their name, include their gender pronouns, list any language(s) they speak and/or write, and indicate anything else they would like our consultants to know about them as writers/learners. We have become particularly interested in what students choose to share about themselves in that last open-ended prompt: When we give students opportunities to disclose aspects of their identity, what do we learn about them and about how they construct their identities in the context of a writing consultation? In this article we share our analysis of client data we collected in 2016–17, which reveals students’ awareness of their identities as writers, students, and learners as well as the complexities of these identities in a writing center context. Our findings also speak to larger conversations about the ways student identities are constructed and created within higher education.University Writing Cente

LANGUAGE BARRIERS IN VERTICAL COMMUNICATION WITHIN THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION

Purpose – The Purpose of this study is to provide a better understanding of the language related issues and its impact on communication between HQ and subsidiaries in a Scandinavian MNC. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on a qualitative in-depth single case study. The empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews from the company, Lyreco. The theoretical framework was constructed by taking into consideration all the solutions and some mediating factors such as time and distance. Findings – It was found that language acts as an important barrier between HQ and subsidiaries, slowing down the communication process. However, the study highlights that these were not only language differences that caused a barrier but also cultural differences. At the same time, language policies also have their influence on the functioning of multinationals. In addition; the research suggests some solutions to deal with language barriers. However, each solution has a combination of advantages and disadvantages, and no certain solution can be considered as a perfect one to deal with the language barriers. MNCs thus need to understand the language barriers well and mix and match the solutions into a blend that is right for the company context. Research limitations – This study was confined to a single case study. The results might therefore have more value if the data sample had been larger or with multiple case companies. Originality/value –The study highlights the crucial role of the language in international business and draws attention to the potential for communication problems arising from the language diversity.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Digital Mathematics Libraries: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

The idea of a World digital mathematics library (DML) has been around since the turn of the 21th century. We feel that it is time to make it a reality, starting in a modest way from successful bricks that have already been built, but with an ambitious goal in mind. After a brief historical overview of publishing mathematics, an estimate of the size and a characterisation of the bulk of documents to be included in the DML, we turn to proposing a model for a Reference Digital Mathematics Library--a network of institutions where the digital documents would be physically archived. This pattern based rather on the bottom-up strategy seems to be more practicable and consistent with the digital nature of the DML. After describing the model we summarise what can and should be done in order to accomplish the vision. The current state of some of the local libraries that could contribute to the global views are described with more details

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