Language management and knowledge transfer in multinational sites

PEst-OE/LIN/UI3213/2014The knowledge-based society we live in has stressed the importance of human capital and brought talent to the top of most wanted skills, especially to companies who want to succeed in turbulent environments worldwide. In fact, streams, sequences of decisions and resource commitments characterize the dayto-day of multinational companies (MNCs). Such decision-making activities encompass major strategic moves like internationalization and new market entries or diversification and acquisitions. In most companies, these strategic decisions are extensively discussed and debated and are generally framed, formulated, and articulated in specialized language often developed by the best minds in the company. Yet the language used in such deliberations, in detailing and enacting the implementation strategy is usually taken for granted and receives little if any explicit attention (Brannen & Doz, 2012) an can still be a “forgotten factor” (Marschan et al. 1997). Literature on language management and international business refers to lack of awareness of business managers of the impact that language can have not only in communication effectiveness but especially in knowledge transfer and knowledge management in business environments. In the context of MNCs, management is, for many different reasons, more complex and demanding than that of a national company, mainly because of diversity factors inherent to internationalization, namely geographical and cultural spaces, i.e, varied mindsets. Moreover, the way of functioning, and managing language, of the MNC depends on its vision, its values and its internationalization model, i.e on in the way the MNE adapts to and controls the new markets, which can vary essentially from a more ethnocentric to a more pluricentric focus. Regardless of the internationalization model followed by the MNC, communication between different business units is essential to achieve unity in diversity and business sustainability. For the business flow and prosperity, intersubsidiary, intra-company and company-client (customers, suppliers, governments, municipalities, etc..) communication must work in various directions and levels of the organization. If not well managed, this diversity can be a barrier to global coordination and create turbulent environments, even if a good technological support is available (Feely et al., 2002: 4). According to Marchan-Piekkari (1999) the tongue can be both (i) a barrier, (ii) a facilitator and (iii) a source of power. Moreover, the lack of preparation for the barriers of linguistic diversity can lead to various costs, including negotiations’ failure and failure on internationalization.. On the other hand, communication and language fluency is not just a message transfer procedure, but above all a knowledge transfer process, which requires extra-linguistic skills (persuasion, assertiveness …) in order to promote credibility of both parties. For this reason, MNCs need a common code to communicate and trade information inside and outside the company, which will require one or more strategies, in order to overcome possible barriers and organization distortions. Whatever the strategy or language policy chosen is, the MNC continues to have a multilingual environment. This fact can trigger both personal and professional side reactions (positive or negative), and above all, power relations (Marchan-Piekkari, Alexandra Albuquerque Polytechnic of Porto ISCAP- School of Accounting and Administration 4465-001 S. Mamede de Infesta CLUNL – Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa Portugal [email protected] Rute Costa Universidade Nova de Lisboa CLUNL – Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa Lisboa Portugal [email protected] José Paulo Esperança ISCTE-IUL Departamento de Finanças Lisboa País [email protected] Business Sustainability III 2 1999; Voermans, 2011).This happens because language is used not only to transfer messages between a sender and a receiver but, above all, to share knowledge, ie "(...) the information required to satisfy needs (...).Thus, only when knowledge becomes explicit and intelligible can be functional and useful; as tacit knowledge, information will not be conveyed, and as such, some employees may not perform certain tasks, make decisions or act in accordance with company policy. So language has a crucial role in the management of MNC and may even be a positive or negative discrimination factor (intentionally or unintentionally) Marschan et al.(1997) and create power authority distortion (PAD). PAD occurs when HQ managers (who have formal authority in the relationship) have to relinquish part of their power to subsidiary managers, who have better language skills in the corporate language (Harzing & Feely, 2008 and function as language mediators. Information, filtered by mediators, can also suffer distortions, manipulations and be used for personal purposes, in cycles of communication that may be beyond their control. Language influences, therefore, all communication flows, clearly interfering with the organizational level, with a "shadow" structure (Marchan-Piekkari et al., 1999) behind the formal chart. Mediated communication in the MNC, including the translation of documents, intra and inter-subsidiary or subsidiariesheadquarter, may thus eventually become an extra function more or less regular of the activity of employees who master foreign languages. However, this function and the impact that this type of translation are also not in any way, thoroughly studied. This paper intends therefore to elaborate on the relation of language/ translation policies and knowledge transfer/ management in international business environments and its impacts in companies’ international communication strategies. Based in several studies on this field, focusing on language management in international companies (Feely, 2003; Marschan et al., 1997; Marschan-Piekkari, Welch, & Welch, 1999; Harzing & Pudelko, 2013), and in a case-study on “language management in business international communication” we intend to discuss in what way (1) the lack of an effective language policy can transversally affect company performance and identity; (2) the investment on language and terminology management may improve quality in communication, both amongst company and subsidiaries and company and clients (3) investment in translation and terminology knowledge, management and tools can boost talent and ROI.publishersversionpublishe

Local area [pye]-calculus

All computers on the Internet are connected, but not all connections are equal. Hosts are grouped into islands of local communication. It is the agreed conventions and shared knowledge that connect these islands, just as much as the switches and wires that run between them. The power and limitation of these conventions and shared knowledge and hence their effectiveness can be investigated by an appropriate calculus. In this thesis I describe a development of the 7r-calculus that is particularly well suited to express such systems. The process calculus, which I call the local area n-calculus or Ian, extends the 7r-calculus so that a channel name can have within its scope several disjoint local areas. Such a channel name may be used for communication within an area or it may be sent between areas, but it cannot itself be used to transmit information from one area to another. Areas are arranged in a hierarchy of levels which distinguish, for example, between a single application, a machine, or a whole network. I present a semantics for this calculus that relies on several side-conditions which are essentially runtime level checks. I show that a suitable type system can provide enough static information to make most of these checks unnecessary. I examine the descriptive power of the /a7r-calculus by comparing it to the 7r-calculus. I find that, perhaps surprisingly, local area communication can be encoded into the 7T-calculus with conditional matching. The encoding works by replacing communication inside an area with communication on a new channel created just for that area. This is analogous to replacing direct communication between two points with a system that broadcasts packets over a background ether. I show a form of operational correspondence between the behaviour of a process in lan and its 7r-calculus translation. One of my aims in developing this calculus is to provide a convenient and ex¬ pressive framework with which to examine convention-laden, distributed systems. I offer evidence that the calculus has achieved this by way of an extended case study. I present a model of Internet communication based on Sockets and TCP over IP and then extend this system with Network Address Translation. I then 4 give a model of the File Transfer Protocol that uses TCP/IP to communicate between networks. Traces of the model show that FTP, run in its normal mode, will fail when the client is using Network Address Translation, whereas, an alternative mode of FTP will succeed. Moreover a normal run of the model over NAT fails in the same way as the real life system would, demonstrating that the model can pick up this failure and correctly highlight the reasons behind it

How Should Translation Competence Be Taught: a Quest for a Better Approach in Translation Class

It is widely agreed that the main aim of translation education is to develop students' translation competence, therefore most researches in translation education contexts focus on identifying the components of transla-tion competence and appropriate curriculum models that integrate these components with suitable teaching strategies. Since translation competence consists of many sub-competences, developing these sub-competences therefore should be the main consideration in translation education. This article is aimed at discussing translation competence in general and how this competence should be de-veloped in a translation class context. Understanding these sort of things is important in formulating the best approach in translation teaching and learning in order to avoid the possible overlap between ‘translation teaching' and ‘language teaching', due to the fact that in some cases what the students get in translation class is not ‘how to be a good translator' but ‘how to be a good language learner'. Further, understanding the nature of students' translation competence and how this should be developed can give an important conceptual framework in formulating a better translation curriculum which considers all aspects the students need to build their translation competence. Keywords: students, translation, competence, teaching

TRANSLATING MEDICAL TEXTS FOR LEGAL PURPOSES: A GROWING CHALLENGE FOR COURT TRANSLATORS AND INTERPRETERS

Przekład tekstów medycznych obejmuje cały szereg różnego typu tekstów, takich jak wypisy szpitalne, epikryzy, artykuły naukowe w czasopismach medycznych, ulotki informacyjne dla pacjenta (PILs) czy też wskazówki dotyczące stosowania leku (IFU). Wkracza również w sferę zainteresowania zawodowego tłumaczy przysięgłych z racji takich czynników jak np. migracja obywateli lub członkostwo Polski w UE i wynikające z tego procedury implementacji prawa unijnego do polskiego oraz wprowadzania wyrobów medycznych na rynek. Tłumacze przysięgli z konieczności więc mają do czynienia z całym szeregiem tekstów z różnych dziedzin medycyny (oraz dziedzin pokrewnych, takich jak np. farmakologia czy biologia). Trudnością i jednocześnie wyzwaniem dla tłumacza w takiej sytuacji stają się: brak wiedzy medycznej, problemy ze znajomością terminologii medycznej (oraz wszechobecnych skrótów i skrótowców) czy ogólnie pojętego dyskursu medycznego. Pociąga to za sobą rozwój nowego profesjonalnego podejścia do tłumaczenia takich tekstów jak również specyficznych kompetencji (dlatego w artykule pokrótce wyjaśnione zostaną pojęcia takie jak profesjonalizm i kompetencja). Podejście zaprezentowane w artykule będzie podejściem zorientowanym na tłumacza.Medical translation has been an area of an increased growth in the demand for translation services. It is considered to cover an extensive variety of genres, starting from hospital discharge reports, epicrises, specialist articles in medical journals, patient information leaflets (PILs) or instructions for use (IFU). It also has entered the area of activity of court translators due to e.g. migration or Poland’s membership in the EU and resultant EU-law implementation procedures (i.e., implementation of the Medical Devices Directive 93/42/EEC) and commercialisation of medical devices, thus generating the need to deal with an array of texts from the entire realm of various fields of medicine, and related disciplines (pharmacy, pharmacology, biology, etc.). Court translators are therefore facing difficulties and at the same time challenges, among which most important are the lack of medical knowledge, medical terminology (including acronyms and abbreviations) or medical phraseology in general. This entails the development of a new professional approach towards proceeding with such tasks, and requires constant improvement of skills and knowledge as well as special competencies that might be of help for translators (for this reason the notions of professionalism and translation competence shall be briefly elucidated). The focus of the article is placed on translation of medical texts seen from the point of view of translators and the purpose of translation, and not from the perspective of users, thus the approach is translator-centred

Lost in Knowledge Translation: Moving Towards a Clearer Picture? Mapping the conceptualisation of knowledge translation, transfer and exchange across public health in the North East

Over recent decades the concept of evidence-based practice in health care has become part of the language of practitioners, policymakers and researchers. However, a gap between the production of research evidence and use of this evidence in practice has been identified, leading to repeated calls for solutions which will render the process more effective and efficient. It is increasingly acknowledged that getting evidence into, or out of, policy and practice arenas is not a straightforward or a linear process and to view it as such may be both misleading and overly simplistic. The term knowledge translation (KT) is used to describe the work required to close or bridge this gap and is becoming common vocabulary. However, as a concept KT (and related terms) are not yet clearly defined, nor are there agreed meanings in many areas including public health. While there is a growing body of literature exploring these concepts, using this evidence to inform public health practice, strategy, research and education is often difficult given the diverse range of sources, the worldviews upon which they are based and the need for local ‘contextual fit’. This study was commissioned by Fuse to explore how various stakeholder groups (e.g. practitioners, commissioners, academics, researchers, local authority/government) make sense of and experience the concepts and processes of knowledge translation, transfer and exchange. The study aims were to: Undertake a rapid review of recent literature syntheses pertaining to knowledge translation, exchange and transfer in public health, Explore and articulate (map) stakeholder conceptualisations and interpretations of knowledge translation, exchange and transfer in public health

Semantic Gateway as a Service architecture for IoT Interoperability

The Internet of Things (IoT) is set to occupy a substantial component of future Internet. The IoT connects sensors and devices that record physical observations to applications and services of the Internet. As a successor to technologies such as RFID and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), the IoT has stumbled into vertical silos of proprietary systems, providing little or no interoperability with similar systems. As the IoT represents future state of the Internet, an intelligent and scalable architecture is required to provide connectivity between these silos, enabling discovery of physical sensors and interpretation of messages between things. This paper proposes a gateway and Semantic Web enabled IoT architecture to provide interoperability between systems using established communication and data standards. The Semantic Gateway as Service (SGS) allows translation between messaging protocols such as XMPP, CoAP and MQTT via a multi-protocol proxy architecture. Utilization of broadly accepted specifications such as W3C's Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology for semantic annotations of sensor data provide semantic interoperability between messages and support semantic reasoning to obtain higher-level actionable knowledge from low-level sensor data.Comment: 16 page

Re-conceptualising the link between research and practice in social work: a literature review on knowledge utilisation

Despite the recent movement towards greater research use in many areas of social work, criticisms persist that decision making in practice is seldom informed by sound research evidence. Discourse about the research-to-practice gap in social work has tended to focus on the feasibility of evidence-based practice for the profession, but has rarely drawn from the broader knowledge utilisation literature. There are important understandings to be gained from the knowledge utilisation field, which spans more than six decades of interdisciplinary research.This article introduces the wider knowledge utilisation literature to a social work audience. It considers the potential of this body of literature to facilitate research use in social work, as well as conceptual issues that may be hindering it from informing improvements to research utilisation in practice