Elisabeth Burr
1. IFDiSH / CoHCO version June 05, 2004 (based on former ADHO versions: January 02, 2003 and March 13, 2003) completed June 08, 2004
Monolingualism and monoculturalism are neither a solution for Europe nor for the world in general, as they would endanger cultural ecosystems and annihilate every notion of singular identity. A social necessity is, instead, the respect for languages, cultures and identities.
That people feel very strongly about their languages and cultures, that they wish to express themselves and have access to information and knowledge in their own language and that there is a direct link between language, culture and identity has been neglected for too much time. "English only" was seen to be the solution not only for the problems of communication but also for the market. And the Anglo-American way of doing things was seen as a model to be followed in many countries.
With the erosion of traditional patterns of identification such as national states brought about by developments like European unification, independance of former colonial states, globalization of the market and not least the overcoming of traditional borders by digital media, the importance of such questions comes to the forefront again. The UNESCO has even felt it to be necessary to declare that people have a right to access digital information and knowledge in their own language.
While the virtual market and online firms have already realised the importance of such questions and not only make available their web pages in many, many languages but realise at the same time, that cultural differences have to be taken into account as well, national governments and institutions in general and universities and learned societies in particular are lagging very much behind in this development.
As the key objectives of the International Federation for Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (IFDiSH) are to create an associational framework that supports the promotion of the scholarly application of advanced technologies in humanities research and teaching as effectively as possible across a wide range of countries and possibly world wide, there is an imperative for IFDiSH to take seriously the multi-lingual and multi-cultural issue and to develop adequate policies and frameworks.
The same goes for the already existing regional chapters, i.e. the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC), the Association for Computers in the Humanities (ACH), and the Consortium for Computing in the Humanities (COCH/COSH), which, at present, are the constituent organisations of IFDiSH, and which themselves operate in very complex linguistic and cultural settings. The same will apply to any regional chapter to be instituted in the future.
Successful handling of multi-lingualism and multi-culturalism is crucial to our credibility as an international scholarly organization, and also to our ability to attract the membership (not just in numbers, but in breadth of constituency) that the organization will need in order to thrive. The humanities computing community has to share knowledge and ideas more widely - and programmatically - across language and cultural barriers. Thus, the goal has to be to create an organization within which there are significantly reduced barriers to scholarly communication and in which the collaborative atmosphere and openness towards new, unusual and innovative approaches that has been the hallmark of ACH/ALLC can be extended to speakers of languages other than English and of diverse cultures.
Linguistic barriers do not only exist with respect to languages other than English, but also texts written in English are not always readily received, notwithstanding the fact that English is understood by a great majority of scholars. Cultural barriers manifest themselves when proposals to our conferences are evaluated largely by specialists belonging to one culture and according to criteria which for historical reasons have been developed with only a certain culture in mind.
In order to overcome these barriers IFDiSH and its envisaged regional chapters like ALLC, ACH, COCH/COSH and the new ones to be created in the future, have to take the multi-lingual, multi-cultural setting in which they operate and from which they draw their membership into account, promoting at the same time a fundamental attitude shift in the scientific community with respect to linguistic and cultural differences.
This means that IFDiSH as a potential world organisation
IFDiSH's policy and activities are to be seen as a framework inside which the regional chapters position themselves. Notwithstanding the absolute commitment to multi-culturalism and multi-lingualism within each of the regional chapters, the chapters can limit their coverage to the languages of the region they focus on. The chapters can, furthermore, adapt the criteria for evaluation and the guidelines for evaluators to the reality of the respective community. The multi-lingual multi-cultural agenda may thus have a slightly different shape from one regional chapter to the other.
Right from the start, the web-pages of IFDiSH / CoHCO which are to be created need to provide for a way to tackle multi-lingualism. All the documents which are of interest for the membership and the public need to be provided in several languages. Furthermore, the integration of documents in more languages has to be planned for. Some type of database where XML-texts are kept and can be updated easily might be a solution. Once developed this should be put at the disposal of the regional chapters as well.
Documents like minutes, reports and so on which concern above all the work of the committee are excluded. They will only be drawn up in the working language. The working language might be different from one regional chapter to the other.
It has to become important to publish one's ideas and research results in different languages. This does not mean, necessarily, that people have to have their original paper translated. Instead, they have to be encouraged to publish their ideas themselves in the different languages they know. This has to be seen as a contribution to the spreading of ideas and to the building-up of knowledge and not, as it is mostly the case now, as a way to increase the number of one's publications.
All papers, i.e. also papers in English, have to be preceded by an abstract in at least one other language. The decision in which language the abstract is to be written lies with the authors of the papers. Whenever possible authors will write the abstracts themselves.
There are certainly financial implications not only for IFDiSH / CoHCO, but also for the regional chapters which need to be studied carefully.
The following would seem to be possible ways of solution:
All this implies certainly quite a lot of work and a change in attitudes. On the other hand we now have a medium at our disposal which allows for a lot of flexibility and variety. Why should we not use the possibilities it offers and accept, instead, that our richness of cultures / languages / identities is reduced only because it is simpler?‡
Furthermore, acknowledging the importance of language and culture for identity and trying to overcome at the same time the linguistic and cultural barriers by exploiting the possibilities offered by digital media and virtual spaces can lead to new research and the development of innovative problem solutions.