Internationalism & multi-lingual - multi-cultural agenda

Elisabeth Burr

1. Version January 02, 2003

2. Version March 13, 2003

1. Aims & objectives

That people feel very strongly about their languages and cultures, that they wish to express themselves in their own language, and that there is a direct link between language, culture and identity has become evident not only in the process of unification Europe finds itself in but also by the terrible events which recently happened in some of the European countries. Monolingualism is thus no solution not only for Europe in particular but for the world in general. Instead, it would endanger the cultural ecosystems and annihilate every notion of singular identity. As the Mainz Resolution of the UNESCO states, furthermore, people have a right to access digital information and knowledge in their own language.

As the key objectives of the ADHO 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 ADHO 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 as they do not operate in mono-lingual and mono-cultural settings either. Instead, even ACH with its main focus on the US finds itself in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural setting, and the setting in which operates the ALLC is very complex, indeed, because of Europe's richness in national languages and cultures, let alone the internal regional diversification in languages and cultures of more or less every European state.

The humanities computing community has to share knowledge and ideas more widely--and programmatically--across language barriers. Such barriers do not only exist with respect to languages other than English, instead texts written in English are not readily received, either, notwithstanding the fact that English is understood by the majority of scholars. Infact, a lot of what is published in English is never read by Germans or people from Romance countries, the same goes naturally for what is published in German or in a Romance language.

Furthermore, as Julia points out, "successful handling of multilingualism 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 goal should be to create an organization within which there are (at a minimum) significantly reduced barriers to scholarly communication (...), and in which the collaborative atmosphere that has been the hallmark of ACH/ALLC can be extended to speakers of languages other than English."

If we do not act now, there is a substantial danger (the signs are already there), that seperate organisations are being created which respect the linguistic and cultural situation of individual regions (for example the Mediterranian) better than the ALLC has been able to do up to now and allow people from this region to comunicate their ideas and acces information in their own languages. This has to be avoided at all costs as it would mean a counterproductive dispersion of energies and means.

A fundamental attidute shift with respect to languages and cultures is thus necessary in our scientific comunities:

• ADHO and its envisaged regional chapters like ALLC, ACH 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. This means, that ADHO as a potential world organisation will have to make its information available in as many (major) languages as possible (see for example Greenpeace), while the individual regional chapters can limit their couverage to the languages of the region they focus on. Not withstanding the absolute commitment to multi-culturalism and multi-lingualism within each of the regional chapters, the multi-lingual multi-cultural agenda may thus have a slightly different shape from one reagional chapter to another.
• 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 built up of knowledge and not, as it is the case now, as a way to increase the number of one's publications.
• Multi-lingual conferences have to become common practice
• Multilingual publications have to be created.

2. Current state of affairs & practice

At the moment not only the ACH but also the European ALLC are considered by most people in Europe, at least, as monolingual English associations. The reasons are not only that their "head quaters" are situated in English speaking countries but that they publish nearly exclusively in English, i.e.

• their associations' www-pages
• the call for papers of the joint conferences (although these conferences are called 'international')
• the information on the conference sites (exceptions?)
• the journals;

Even Literary & Linguistic Computing (LLC) seems to give the impression of being an English journal although it publishes papers in more than one language.

3. Range of possibilities

• multi-lingual sites
  • of ADHO
  • of the regional chapters

• journal in print
  • foster publication of papers in different languages
  • all papers, i.e. also papers in English, have to be preceded by an abstract in at least one other language
  • authors decide in which language the abstract is to appear
  • authors write the abstract themselves in a different language

• electronic journal
  • multi-lingual web-site
  • publication of papers in at least two languages
  • abstracts in some other languages
  • there are some examples: http://www.uclm.es/lamusa/, http://www.linguistik-online.de/

• conferences
  • multi-lingual conference sites
  • multi-lingual call for papers
  • to ask for abstracts in at least two languages (one of the languages has to be among the conference languages)
  • both versions of the abstract are to be published on the conference web site (an example is: CLiP 2001 http://www.uni-duisburg.de/FB3/CLiP2001/ )
  • build up list of reviewers who can review papers in languages other than English
  • simultaneous translation

4. Proposals

• start with sites of associations
  • start with most important documents
  • start with French, German, Italian and Spanish
  • do not do anything about the web sites of past conferences
  • do not translate documents which are important only for historical reasons

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• next conference (2004)
  • enlargement of EU
  • topic on multilingualism
  • multilingual conference web site
  • a must is a version of the site in the language of the country
  • Conference announcement in several languages
  • Conference abstracts in at least two languages
  • Conference presentations in several languages
  • simultaneous translation service
  • study ways of getting money from the EC

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• Scholarly publications in print
  • start asking abstracts in a different language

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• Electronic journal
  • multilingual right from the start
  • study ways of making integration with other languages as easy as possible

• Outreach activities
  • support initiatives in different countries
  • become part of CHiME

5. Financial implications

Costs are certainly a key issue

Un eventual umbrella organization might have to spend some money on this.

If we were able to turn multi-lingualism into a prestigious thing then members should / would be prepared to pay their share to the umbrella organisation, too.

It would be very interesting to consider the creation of a spin-off enterprise, as well and thus make a contribution to the job market

• through corporate sponsorship?
• in a few venues, by local collaboration (e.g. through a translation school)
• through subvention by the sponsoring organizations, as part of their larger plan for handling multilingualism
• through some increase in conference fees (particularly if the conference is larger than at present)
• through innovation and advance planning: e.g. by providing advance translation services to reduce the need for simultaneous interpretation; by creating a compensation or incentive structure for organization members who assist in translation (Julia)

6. Transition requirements/options

There will be a lot of work at the beginning but less once the documents which interest the public will have been translated.

Translations cannot be done by members of the local organisations.

It would be much better to get a university involved which is doing translation studies and would be willing to create or already has created a spin off enterprise
doing translations and thus could offer such a service to congress organisers and speakers / authors who cannot do their abstract or paper in a second language. We would
naturally have to study ways to make such a service available in affordable terms.

The umbrella organisation would have some responsibility there.

7. Final remarks

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?á

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