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SOLSTICE 2007 Conference, Edge Hill University
Producing good quality, multilingual, web-oriented textmaterial in a multicultural project: the Passport To Tradecase study
Rossi, G.
1
, D. Sumpter
2
, V. Barron
3
, J. Swift
3
, J. Silver
3
, G. Draper
3
, A.Klosová
4
, K. Lawrence
3
, J. Ridsdale Saw
5
1
Spin scrl (I),rossi@consorziospin.it,
2
ABS (E),
3
University of Salford (UK) ,
4
TIS Praha (CZ),
5
Stratex (B)ABSTRACT
The purpose of this work is to present a methodology to support the production ofmultilingual training material.Such an activity is very common to many European multicultural projects, whereadditional value is afforded both by the identification of regional-specific issues in acommon European framework and by the availability of the material in a number ofdifferent countries and cultural/linguistic environments.In most cases, such projects face two problems. The first is that producing the versionsin different languages requires taking into account a large number of country-specificcultural issues. This means that you might not even know what information about yourcultural environment is relevant (i.e. different, not banal) for the other national cultures.The second issue is that the material for the different countries must be developed witha comparable level of detail and a uniform style by remote and not alwayshomogeneous national teams.Such issues can make the production of the material (including proof-reading and stylecorrection) a very long and costly process, and even more so when one adds the needfor multiple translations. Even worse, each element in the production chain increasesthe risk of errors being introduced. Linguists and professional translators are veryfamiliar with such problems, but teams working on transnational projects are not alwaysfully aware of their impact and consequences.The EMBER project (“
Effective Marketing for Business in European Regions 
”) and thePASSPORT TO TRADE project, both supported by the European Leonardo da VinciProgramme, are good case studies, and, from the complexity of their tasks, enables thecompilation of a set of useful guidelines.
 
SOLSTICE 2007 Conference, Edge Hill University
KEYWORDS
Training, Business culture, Web writing, Linguistic competencies.
INTRODUCTION
Producing multilingual material is a common goal of many European projects, whereadditional value is afforded both by the identification of regional-specific issues in acommon European framework and by the availability of the material in a number ofdifferent countries and cultural/linguistic environments. This is the case with projectselaborating on specific topics (e.g., social conditions, education systems, nationallegislation, etc.) as well as for projects developing training materials for specificprofessional profiles.In most cases, such projects face two problems. The first is that the material for thedifferent countries must be developed with a comparable level of detail and a uniformstyle by remote and not always homogeneous national teams. The second is thatproducing versions in different languages requires taking into account a large number ofcountry-specific cultural issues. Such issues can make the production of the material(including proof-reading and style correction) a very long and costly process, and evenmore so when one adds the need for multiple translations. Even worse, each element inthe production chain increases the risk of errors being introduced. Linguists andprofessional translators are very familiar with such problems, but teams working ontransnational projects are not always fully aware of their impact and consequences.This issue is even more problematical when the project itself is dealing with culturaldifferences [RBB93, Swi98, SL03], as is the case with the EMBER (“
Effective Marketing for Business in European Regions 
”) and Passport To Trade projects. In this case,another very important question is that you might not know what information about yourcultural environment is relevant (i.e. different, not banal) for the other regional cultures.The EMBER and P2T projects aims to develop informative materials for small andmedium sized companies on the subject of business culture and etiquette in Europe.The material must be multilingual and primarily accessible on the web. After a pilotexercise (Czech Republic, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom), the P2T project isgoing to cover 25 EU countries by June 2007.The material, presented under the logo “
Passport to Trade 
” and available on the website
www.businessculture.org
is organised in six sections: Section 1 - Political and EconomicEnvironment; Section 2 - General Business Environment; Section 3 - Business Practice;Section 4 - Business Meetings; Section 5 - Useful Phrases; Section 6 - Further Reading.The EMBER and P2T projects are supported by the Leonardo da Vinci programme andundertaken by partners from the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Italy,Finland, Ireland and Spain. The nature of these partners is varied; member institutions
 
SOLSTICE 2007 Conference, Edge Hill University
include universities, a private business school, SME consultancies and a Europeanmarketing association. All members have considerable experience in transnationalbusiness activities, and the University of Salford (the project coordinator) has alsopreviously developed similar materials (in English language only) on China, Chile andMexico. E-learning experience and some linguistic skills are also represented.Nonetheless, the differences between the national teams are significant. Among otherthings, knowledge of the English language varies considerably between individualmembers of the team. This is important since English is used as the common workinglanguage for meetings and internal communication as well as for writing the first publicversion of the information material.In order to cope with the problems mentioned at the beginning of the Section, theEMBER and P2T teams started developing a set of internal guidelines for writing thematerial. We have progressively extended and revised the content, learning from ourmistakes and from the users' validation.Many comments on the socio-linguistic aspects are based on a specific linguisticanalysis [Sum05]. A more detailed presentation of the methodology is available as aninternal EMBER report [EMB05].The second Section of this present study elaborates on the differences between extra-national, bi-national and truly international materials and provides a check-list to avoidcommon pitfalls.The third Section of the study refers to basic techniques for producing good quality textand makes particular reference to the need for professional proof-reading and editing.The last Section describes the overall process for the production of new international-oriented, multi-language country-specific materials.
WRITING INTERNATIONAL MATERIALS
Materials concerning more than one country fall generally into one of three categories:1.
Extra-national
. It is relatively easy to prepare people in one cultural context (orcountry) for activities in another outside their own. One writes in a commonlanguage for a common readership with common characteristics, and with acommon interest or need. There are few socio-linguistic or cultural problems inthis situation. Linguistically, the subject-matter is irrelevant; the information maybe about other periods of history, other specialisms, other countries, but thelanguage issues are simple.2.
Bi-national
. A more complex type of project consists in facilitating the
interchange
of activities between two cultures. If a project, for example, hadbeen prepared not only to facilitate British contact with a specific foreign countrybut also contact between that country and the UK, then the language aspects,style of presentation and many other elements would be entirely different. Itwould be a common work, to be made available in two languages, for peoplefrom two cultures. What is a joke to someone in UK may not be to the foreigners.
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