Language Professionals and Culture Professionals

The contemporary language industry is characterised by a growing presence of new professions requiring competences in language and technology. Even though it might seem that such developments could marginalise culture-related knowledge, this chapter claims that this is not the case, and that (inter)cultural competence remains an important asset even for the tech-focused professions. The evidence presented for this claim comes from data sources ranging from a literature review to job advertisements and interviews with industry representatives, conducted and collected within the ongoing project UPgrading the SKIlls of Linguistics and Language Students. The project identifies seven competence clusters that it proposes for inclusion in the university education of future language professionals. An (inter)cultural cluster is placed at the core, jointly with the disciplinary (language-related) and transversal knowledge and skills, and is seen as required for all students of languages and linguistics

Toward a new profile for twenty-first century language specialists: Industry, institutional and academic insights. UPSKILLS Intellectual Output 1.2

The extraordinary achievements of artificial intelligence are impacting all sectors of society and raising issues that concern, among others, what emerging skills are needed by the world of work, how amplification of the current gender gap can be limited, and whether disruption can be an engine for positive change. These issues affect the language and linguistics sectors strongly, and should be carefully considered by higher education degrees in setting their priorities so as to favour employability, job retention and job satisfaction for the coming years

Input i postignuće u usvajanju stranog jezika

A shared belief that input plays an important role in second language (L2) acquisition is widely held in both theory and practice. Despite prominent diver- gences in the importance it is assigned in different theoretical frameworks, scho- lars are in agreement on the fact that no language can be acquired without expo- sure to input. Accordingly, the objectives of this paper are: to point to some of the common problems researchers encounter as regards explorations into input and its influence on achievement, on the basis of relevant L2 acquisition literature; to propose directions of future research based on the conclusions drawn; and to underline possible implications for foreign language teaching and learning. We conclude that a paradigm shift towards more complex models of input is requi- red with regard to theory, that researchers should strive to apply more methodo- logically rigorous measurements of input and achievement, and that the results obtained in empirical research should be directly incorporated into textbooks and (pre- and in-service) teacher guides

Survey of curricula: Linguistics and language-related degrees in Europe. UPSKILLS Intellectual output 1.1

open5siThe needs analysis of the UPSKILLS project is the foundation for all subsequent project activities, and the survey of curricula (SoC) as its first step is designed to provide insights for finetuning the interventions and materials that will be designed during the lifetime of the project, as well as for enlarging the pool of stakeholders to whom the project results will be disseminated. The SoC has several steps: drawing a list of European language and linguistics degrees from international ranking websites, selecting and analyzing a representative sample of degrees based on a set of indicators agreed upon by all partners, and additional study of a selection of degrees that the partners identified as exemplary in the context of the UPSKILLS project.openGledić, Jelena; Đukanović, Maja; Miličević Petrović, Maja; van der Lek, Iulianna; Assimakopoulos, StavrosGledić, Jelena; Đukanović, Maja; Miličević Petrović, Maja; van der Lek, Iulianna; Assimakopoulos, Stavro

Jezična akomodacija na Twitteru: Primjer Srbije

U ovom radu istražujemo fenomen jezične akomodacije kod srpskih korisnika Twittera analizirajući geokodirane poruke objavljene u razdoblju između 2013. i 2016. godine na području Bosne i Hercegovine, Crne Gore, Hrvatske i Srbije. Jezičnu produkciju korisnika Twittera opi- sujemo s pomoću 16 varijabli za koje je poznato da variraju među govornicima policentričnog makrojezika BCHS. Uspoređujemo jezičnu produkciju mobilnih srpskih korisnika Twittera s produkcijom nemobilnih srpskih korisnika, kao i produkciju mobilnih korisnika u Srbiji i izvan nje. Dok prva analiza djelomično podržava teoriju akomodacije, druga analiza ne daje nikakve naznake tog fenomena

Digitalizacija jezika i kulture kroz elektronske korpuse: primer timočkih govora

The aim of this paper is to describe the ongoing development of an electronic corpus of the Timok vernacular, a rare example of an oral dialect corpus of the Serbian language. The corpus comprises data relevant for both linguistics and studies of (traditional) culture, and as such it can help bridge the gap currently present between corpus linguistics and digital humanities. The material contained in the corpus is a result of fieldwork research conducted between 2015 and 2017, mainly within the project Protecting the intangible culture of the Timok vernacular. The paper outlines the phases of fieldwork research, in particular the selection of villages and participants, as well as the open-ended interview methodology applied in data collection. The steps in corpus development are presented next: transcription, annotation (part-of-speech tagging, lemmatization, normalization), and the resulting search options. In addition, an overview of previous and ongoing studies based on the collected material are provided, capturing the domains of dialectology, Balkan linguistics, socio-, areal and anthropological linguistics, as well as studies of folklore and traditional culture, with suggestions for future research in these domains

Zapisovalne prakse v spletni slovenščini

V poglavju obravnavamo značilnosti nestandardnega zapisa besed v slovenskih objavah na družbenem omrežju Twitter. Analiza temelji na ročno normalizira-nih, lematiziranih in oblikoskladenjsko označenih vzorcih tvitov v slovenščini. Podrobneje proučimo distribucijo pretvorb iz standardnega v nestandard-ni zapis besed glede na besedne vrste in leme ter distribucijo treh različnih vrst transformacij: izpust, dodajanje in zamenjavo črk. Rezultati kažejo, da je največ transformacij med polnopomenskimi besedami, vendar so transfor-macije slovničnih besed najpogostejše. Najpogostejši tip transformacij so iz-pusti, predvsem samoglasnikov, do česar največkrat prihaja na koncu besed, s čimer se neformalna komunikacija v tvitih približuje govoru

Competences, skills and tasks in today's jobs for linguists: Evidence from a corpus of job advertisements. UPSKILLS Intellectual output 1.3

The corpus-based analysis of job advertisements is part of the UPSKILLS needs analysis. Its objective is twofold. First, it aims to provide an overview of the knowledge, skills and competences mentioned in job posts targeting graduates in language-related degrees or professionals with expertise in this area, as well as of the typical tasks and responsibilities associated with these positions. Second, it aims to provide an initial list of companies at the crossroads between the language sector and the digital sector, which can be involved as stakeholders for the dissemination of UPSKILLS results

Language data and project specialist: A new modular profile for graduates in language-related disciplines. UPSKILLS Intellectual output 1.6

The UPSKILLS needs analysis explored the current academic offer in language- and linguistics-related fields (modern languages and cultures, translation, general linguistics, etc.) and the requirements the job market has for graduates in these areas. The analysis highlighted the need for a new skill set and a new mind frame to meet the demands as well as the professional challenges of the industry. Taking into consideration the results of the individual components of the needs analysis, this final report outlines a new professional profile, that of the language data and project specialist, and includes a detailed description of the knowledge, skills and competences that present-day and future graduates in languages and linguistics should obtain to improve their employability in the digital business sector

Otvoreni resursi i tehnologije za obradu srpskog jezika

Open language resources and tools are very important for increasing the quality and speeding up the development of technologies for natural language processing. This paper presents a set of open resources available for processing the Serbian language. We describe several manually annotated corpora, as well as a range of computational models, including a web service designed in order to facilitate their use