Increasingly, system designers and developers recognise that more refined data models (in terms of a higher granularity and a higher level of international unification and harmonisation) can enable information and knowledge management in the organisation to cope with the above-mentioned cost situation. A higher degree of standardisation of methodology with respect to TLRs, is a prerequisite for achieving satisfactory solutions for information and knowledge management based on multilingual content management in the enterprise. This was thoroughly investigated by Martin (2001).
E-business – especially in combination with mobile computing resulting in m-commerce – is probably going to change the organisation and operation of enterprises and their business quite radically in the near future. Enterprises and other organisations / institutions will be forced not only to link hitherto separated systems to each other, but to really ‘integrate’ all data processing systems of the organisation – of course including their content. Latest at this point, the whole degree of variation in language usage within the organisation will become apparent.
Industry and trade are already preparing for applying language engineering methods and tools to used languages down to the dialect level. Therefore, lesser-used languages (often also: minority languages) can benefit from new chances for development in the emerging multilingual information society – if, again, the respective language communities are prepared to do the necessary efforts.
4. e-Content
A recent study for the European Commission (Andersen 2002) identifies, among others, the following transaction-centric and content-centric kinds of content or m-content services which are already emerging (left hand side), to which enhanced future kinds of m-content or m-content services could be added (right hand side):
Content based on language resources → multilingual, multimedia, multimodal m-content
• mobile general news • mobile public information
• mobile transport information • mobile transport and delivery information
• mobile financial data • mobile financial services
• mobile games • MT services for professionals
• mobile edutainment • mobile learning and training
• mobile music • mobile composing
• mobile transaction services • mobile B2B services
• mobile directories • mobile directories for professionals
• mobile adult information • mobile information for professionals
It seems that MCC will further drive the need for multilingual TLRs and the respective methods as well as for methodology standardisation.
For enterprises using the Internet for e-commerce the general principle “sell products / services globally, but market them locally” applies – even, if they may not recognise it at the beginning. ICTs are changing nearly everything in society – even language as such and the application of languages as well as the cooperation of people using language. Multilinguality applies to nearly every aspect of an information system:
• language use in general;
• content in terms of:
terminologies, language resources;
• access to information;
• special adaptations for disabled persons;
• cyberspace: complex network of networks developing out of the Internet and other information networks;
• networking;
• communication;
• knowledge and knowledge databases;
• understanding and intercultural communication.
In this connection intercultural aspects have more influence on data modelling and programming than one might expect. This and the respective needs for standards as well as future requirements have been extensively investigated in a number of reports.
In a letter to Business Week (April 8, 2002) Berners-Lee (MIT, the ‘father’ of the
“Semantic Web” conception) denies that the WWW will be replaced by the Semantic Web, with the following arguments:
The WWW contains documents intended for human consumption, and those intended for machine processing. The Semantic Web will enhance the latter. The Semantic Web will not understand human language ... The Semantic Web is about machine languages*:
well-defined, mathematical, boring, but processable. Data, not poetry.
[* in the meaning of highly standardised natural language or highly controlled language]
Berners-Lee thus indicates that he is widely misunderstood or misinterpreted.
These remarks also point in the direction of how language use in the information and knowledge society in general and in future e-business (comprising the whole range of e-commerce, e-procurement, e-content, etc. to m-commerce) will develop: highly harmonised terminology combined with factual data and common language elements need to be provided in a form:
• presumably nearer to human natural language usage in B2C;
• presumably nearer to highly ‘controlled languages’ in B2B.
What is new in this connection is that these machine languages will also be multilingual in terms of human language use. Beside, they will be multilingual, multimodal and multimedia from the outset.
5. Conclusion
Hardware costs are not only decreasing year by year, hardware components are also nearing the time-honoured ideal of ‘plug-and-play’ according to the OSI standard (open system interconnection). Software still is far too expensive – not in terms of purchase, but in terms of the necessary adaptation and continuous upgrading. In addition software today is still far away from ‘plug-and-play’. But the increased emergence of open-source software will reduce costs in the long run. High-quality content creation and maintenance, however, still is and will be the biggest cost factor.
In analogy to ISO’s OSI model we need something like an OCI (Open Content Interoperability) model – which in fact is the vision of ISO / TC 37.
A higher degree of standardisation of methodology with respect to TLRs, is a prerequisite for achieving satisfactory solutions for information and knowledge management based on content management in the enterprise. Increasingly system designers and developers recognise that only:
• more refined data models (in terms of a higher granularity and a higher degree of international unification and harmonisation),
• the application of standards, and
• the application of the appropriate methodologies,
can enable content management in the organisation to cope with the array of problems posed by accelerated globalisation – and the need for more localisation in its wake.
References & Bibliography
Andersen (ed.). 2002. Digital content for global mobile services. Final report.
Luxembourg: CEC.
Berners-Lee, T. 2002. Reader’s letter. In Business Week, 8 April 2002.
CEN (ed.). 1999. Model for metadata for multimedia information. Brussels: CEN.
(CEN / ISSS / CWA 13699:1999)
CEN (ed.). 2000. Guidance information for the use of the Dublin Core in Europe.
Brussels: CEN. (CEN / ISSS / CWA 13988:2000E)
CEN (ed.). 2000. Dublin Core metadata element set. Brussels: CEN. (CEN / ISSS / CWA 13874:2000)
CEN (ed.). 2000. Description of structure and maintenance of the Web based Observatory of European work on metadata. Brussels: CEN. (CEN / ISSS / CWA 13989:2000)
CEN (ed.). 2000. Information Technology – Multilingual European subsets in ISO / IEC 10646-1. Brussels: CEN. (CEN / ISSS / CWA 13873:2000)
CEN (ed.). 2001. European culturally specific ICT requirements. Brussels: CEN.
(CEN / ISSS / CWA 14094:2001)
Clews, J. and H. Hjulstad (project team). 2002. Programming for cultural diversity in ICT systems. A Project Team report to CEN / ISSS on consensus-building in European standardisation. Final version 2002-09-23. Brussels: CEN.
EURESCOM Report on P923 “Multilingual web sites: Best practice, guidelines and architectures. D1 Guidelines for building multilingual web sites – Sept. 2000”
GAO (ed.). 2002. Electronic government. Challenges to effective adoption of the Extensible Markup Language. Report to the Chairman, Committee on Government Affairs, U.S. Senate. Washington: United States General Accounting Office. (GAO-02-327)
Hawkins, R. (ed.). 2000. Study of the standards-related information requirements of users in the information society. Brussels: SPRU. (Final Report to CEN / ISSS 14 February 2000)
Hovy, E. et al. (eds.). Multilingual information management: Current levels and future abilities. A report commissioned by the US National Science Foundation and also delivered to the European Commission’s Language Engineering Office and the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. April 1999.
(Web version 23/10/2000: <http://www2.hltcentral.org/hlt/download/MLIM.
html>)
Martin, B. 2001. Terminology management driving content management. In F.
Steurs (ed.). TAMA 2001. Terminology in Advanced Microcomputer Applications. Sharing terminological knowledge. Terminology for multilingual content: 26-39. Vienna: TermNet Publisher.
Matteini, S. 2001. Multilinguality and the Internet. European Parliament. (Research Directorate A. STOA – Scientifical and Technological Options Assessment.
Briefing Note No. 2 / 2001). <http://www.europarl.eu.int/stoa/publi/pdf/
briefings/02_en.pdf>
Pricewaterhouse, C. (ed.). 2001. Cultural diversity market study. Final Report.
Luxembourg.
UNESCO (ed.). 2001. Report of the General Conference 31st Session. Paris, 15 October to 3 November 2001. Document 31 / C5. Volume 1 Resolutions: 68-69.
UNESCO (ed.). 2001. Draft recommendation concerning the promotion and use of multilingualism and universal access to cyberspace. Paris: UNESCO.
(Document C31 / 25 Corr.)
Appendix 1
Traditional and new content creation and data modelling
Traditional Data Modelling Enhanced Data Modelling
• mono-purpose • multi-purpose and multi-functional
• textual data • graphical symbols, formula, etc.
• images and other visual representations
• multimedia, multimodal
• TLRs data categories • additional ontology data categories
• higher degree of granularity
• data elements repeatable by language and within language
• other kinds of repeatability (e.g.
register)
• qualifiers, attributes, properties, etc.
• statistics, validation, copyright management, etc.
• language independent approach • multimedia and multimodality (incl.
non-linguistic representations)
• by subject-field experts, LR experts with subject-field expertise
• by anybody according to level of expertise... (→ sophisticated access right management)
• traditional systematic / semi-systematic approach
• using also other kinds of systematic approaches
• conventional DB management • sophisticated database management methodology (based on metadata approaches for distributed DBs)
• conventional quality control • automatic validation, maintenance, copyright management
Traditional Content Creation New Methods of Content Creation
• by one subject-field expert
• by one LR expert
LR expert can serve as:
• consultant
• project manager
• by a group of experts (subject-field experts or specialised LR expert with subject-field expertise or mixed
• net-based distributed co-operative work to establish content databases
• including terminological and other
composition of expert group:
majority experts with the assistance of one or a few terminologists;
majority terminologists with the assistance of one or a few experts).
language / knowledge resources
• additional features:
(semi-)automatic validation copyright management
→ all users are potential creators of data
→ economies of scale in contents creation
Appendix 2
ISO / TC 37 “Terminology and other language resources”
(PWI “Basic principles of multilingual product classification for e-commerce”) ISO / TC 37 / SC 1 “Principles and methods”
• WG 2 “Vocabulary of terminology”
• WG 3 “Principles, methods and concept systems”
• *WG 4 “Terminology of socio-linguistic applications”
ISO / TC 37 / SC 2 “Terminography and lexicography”
• WG 1 “Language coding”
• WG 2 “Terminography”
• WG 3 “Lexicography”
• WG 4 “Source identification for language resources”
ISO / TC 37 / SC 3 “Computer applications in terminology”
• WG 1 “Data elements”
• WG 2 “Vocabulary”
• WG 3 “Data interchange”
• WG 4 “Database management”
ISO / TC 37 / SC 4 “Language resource management”
• WG 1 “Basic descriptors and mechanisms for language resources”
• *WG 2 “Representation schemes”
• *WG 3 “Multilingual text representation”
• *WG 4 “Lexical database”
• *WG 5 “Workflow of language resource management”
*planned