Multilingual Information Framework for Handling textual data in Digital Media

This document presents MLIF (Multi Lingual Information Framework), a high-level model for describing multilingual data across a wide range of possible applications in the translation/localization process within several multimedia domains (e.g. broadcasting interactive programs within a multilingual community)

Open educational resources in Europe: A triptych of actions to support participation in higher education

In contrast to the face-to-face learning of campus based universities and the focus on traditional students, distance teaching universities focus on a mix of distance learning, e-learning, open learning, virtual mobility, learning communities, and the integration of earning and learning. In doing so, they are taking a leading role in helping to increase and widen participation in lifelong open and flexible learning in higher education by non-traditional groups. This paper discusses three leading-edge European Open Educational Resource initiatives. The initiatives are special in nature and differ from the offers of traditional universities in the sense that they: consist of pedagogically-rich learning materials, specifically designed and developed for distance learning and intended for independent self-study; are compiled in the national languages, with the EADTU initiative being multilingual, reflecting the European dimension; and, support and are supported by the policies of the national governments and the European Commission

Natural language processing

Beginning with the basic issues of NLP, this chapter aims to chart the major research activities in this area since the last ARIST Chapter in 1996 (Haas, 1996), including: (i) natural language text processing systems - text summarization, information extraction, information retrieval, etc., including domain-specific applications; (ii) natural language interfaces; (iii) NLP in the context of www and digital libraries ; and (iv) evaluation of NLP systems

Learning about Chinese-speaking cultures at a distance

This chapter focuses on the challenges posed by curriculum choices and pedagogical frameworks to the study of Languages of the Wider World in the UK. These languages reflect complex linguistic and cultural realities that do not fit into the traditional constraints of language education, which raises questions about the extent to which we can address the global and local dimensions of the target languages and cultures. I examine in particular the case of Chinese – a language family with multiple varieties and spoken by many communities in Asia and other parts of the globe – in the context of distance education. Issues surrounding language learning at a distance are discussed, as well as the role that teachers and technology play in supporting the development of language learners’ cultural awareness. While teachers can, in a face-to-face situation, exploit, expand and discuss cultural information, this possibility is very limited in distance learning. We will see how, at present, technology has taken on a major role in both formal and informal education, facilitating contact between learners and between learners and teachers (however distant they might be). For example, the Open University’s beginners’ Chinese course discussed here makes use of online forums to enable cultural interaction; initial examinations of these forums reveal the students to be diverse and mobile, and they also give us a sense of their cultural stances, and of the shapes of the beliefs, values and attitudes supported by their individual cultural backgrounds

Cross-language Wikipedia Editing of Okinawa, Japan

This article analyzes users who edit Wikipedia articles about Okinawa, Japan, in English and Japanese. It finds these users are among the most active and dedicated users in their primary languages, where they make many large, high-quality edits. However, when these users edit in their non-primary languages, they tend to make edits of a different type that are overall smaller in size and more often restricted to the narrow set of articles that exist in both languages. Design changes to motivate wider contributions from users in their non-primary languages and to encourage multilingual users to transfer more information across language divides are presented.Comment: In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2015. AC

Computational Sociolinguistics: A Survey

Language is a social phenomenon and variation is inherent to its social nature. Recently, there has been a surge of interest within the computational linguistics (CL) community in the social dimension of language. In this article we present a survey of the emerging field of "Computational Sociolinguistics" that reflects this increased interest. We aim to provide a comprehensive overview of CL research on sociolinguistic themes, featuring topics such as the relation between language and social identity, language use in social interaction and multilingual communication. Moreover, we demonstrate the potential for synergy between the research communities involved, by showing how the large-scale data-driven methods that are widely used in CL can complement existing sociolinguistic studies, and how sociolinguistics can inform and challenge the methods and assumptions employed in CL studies. We hope to convey the possible benefits of a closer collaboration between the two communities and conclude with a discussion of open challenges.Comment: To appear in Computational Linguistics. Accepted for publication: 18th February, 201

Internationalisation and modern languages in Scottish Further and Higher Education

This scoping study investigated the impact of internationalisation strategies on modern language provision in Scottish further and higher education and was commissioned by the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. It follows on from the report by Footitt (2005), which explored issues of internationalisation and modern languages in England. The present investigation had the following aims: to identify the main policy documents related to internationalisation strategies and modern languages in Scottish further and higher education and explore to which extent internationalisation initiatives support or encourage the development of students' language and to explore the explicit and implicit messages given by institutional websites about international student support and about modern language study; to explore the views of selected stakeholders in Scottish further and higher education with regard to internationalisation strategies and in what ways international activities at selected institutions offer opportunities for language learning