Cultural inclusion in information and communications services

Specialist Task Force STF 287 “User-oriented handling of multicultural issues in multimedia communications” Funded by the EC/EFTA Mike Pluke, STF leader Francoise Petersen Derek Pollard Bianca Szalai STF 287 Multicultural Communication 1

eInclusion

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A key eEurope 2005 objective:

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“to give everyone the opportunity to participate in the global information society”

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The work of ETSI’s STF287:

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Seeks to remove or reduce cultural/language barriers

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Is therefore fully in support of this objective STF 287 Multicultural Communication 2

There are two traditional approaches to meeting user’s requirements

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Localization

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Personalization STF 287 Multicultural Communication 3

Localization

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In the early days of ICT many innovative products and services were only available in English with US cultural conventions.

To overcome this extreme cultural bias, companies try to “localize” their product and services to a number of “locales” (a language + a region).

A localized product will be targeted at the typical needs of a person in the region who speaks the specified language.

But are we all equally typical of our locale?

A wide range of tools and techniques have been developed to support the localization process.

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Limitations of traditional localization

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Traditional localization of information and communication services may not help: a) someone:

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communicating with other people or accessing services in other countries;

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visiting or residing in a country where the language is not their native language;

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who only speaks a minority language of a country; who only has a limited vocabulary in their own language;

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who lip-reads, uses sign language, or the Bliss symbols system.

b) public and private sector organisations dealing with customers or organisations in other countries.

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Personalization

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In the early days of ICT you were grateful to have an application that did something.

You had no way to change the way that the application worked.

It was “One size fits all”.

Now there are many ways in which the application can be personalized to meet your own preferences.

The user themselves can drive the personalization.

The application can adapt itself to the way that the user tries to use it.

The key to all this personalization is the “user profile”.

With a user profile, your preferred settings can be different in different contexts (e.g. your emails can be spoken to you when you are in the car but be in written text when at home).

ETSI has done a detailed analysis of how user profiles could be managed – this is documented in the ETSI Guide EG 202 325.

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Personalization of language and cultural settings

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The options to specify language and cultural settings are usually very limited.

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You may only be able to chose a single language.

You may be able to select a complete set of regionally varying settings (e.g. the weights and measures, currency and date format for the USA).

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Your chosen settings will apply irrespective of what you are doing.

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e.g. your language settings will not change when you communicate with someone speaking a different language. STF 287 Multicultural Communication 7

The one simple requirement

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The ultimate requirement for most people is very simple: “Everyone wants to be able to communicate or access information in ways that are compatible with their language and cultural preferences.”

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But meeting this can be very difficult!

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Counterproductive attempts at cultural adaptation

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Organisations often think that they have solved the language and cultural issues with simple techniques.

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These may work for a majority of users.

But for a significant minority they may cause big problems e.g.:

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guessing language from an IP address; basing text prediction dictionaries on the user interface language chosen by the mobile phone user; (e.g. very difficult typing English, using predictive text, on a mobile phone configured for German users).

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Personal Localization – the answer?

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Localization and Personalization have largely followed separate development paths.

They have used different tools and techniques.

Effective user profile management will permit: …..

Personal localization.

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Adapting the product or service to the cultural and language needs of the individual.

This needs adapted localization tools and techniques to be used in conjunction with user profile management techniques.

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Requirements for Personal Localization

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Personal localization will require the ability to create, use and manage user profiles in ways that:

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allow services to obtain information about a user's language skills and cultural preferences;

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and maintain an appropriate level of user privacy.

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Earlier ETSI work on User Profile Management and a Universal Communications Identifier support this aim and are at the heart of personal localization.

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The majority of approaches being recommended by STF287 require the personal localization approach. STF 287 Multicultural Communication 11

Approaches that help to achieve personal localization

STF287 has seen ways in which all of the following could be used - singly and together:

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user profile management (ETSI); user identification (ETSI); language skill description (Council of Europe); structured authoring (OASIS); localisation interchange file format (OASIS); terminologies (LISA); metadata (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative); machine translation; translation memory; terminology databases; automatic translation to support human translators; the assembly of pre-translated segments of text to dynamically create documents.

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Personal localization + Localized content

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Until it is possible to know what the user needs there is no point in having content to meet those needs

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The success of personal localization techniques should drive the demand for a wider range of localized content.

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The availability of a wider range of localized content will make personal localization more successful.

This can be seen as a classic “win-win” situation.

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STF287 proposes to give guidance on

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Defining levels of language skill and how people might assess their own capabilities.

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Storing information about cultural preferences and language skills.

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How a service provider can access this information to deliver an appropriate version of a service to a user.

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and … STF 287 Multicultural Communication 14

and guidance on

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Delivery of content and the handling of user input taking account of a range of cultures and languages.

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Optimising the match of service options to user preferences.

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The use of existing standards and guidelines identifying where new ones need to be developed.

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The incorporation of country-specific legal requirements into business ICT provision.

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How we are going to do it

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Identifying existing standards and guidelines: including ETSI work on User Profile Management and a Universal Communications Identifier (UCI).

Extensive consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, e.g.

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Globalisation, internationalisation, localisation and translation companies

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Information service providers Other standards bodies e.g. CEN, ISO, LISA, Unicode Research projects etc.

Write guidelines.

Identify further work that needs to be done.

At present we are proposing that new ETSI STF work is needed on defining how language and cultural requirements can be encoded in user profiles.

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Project Overview

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Work commenced: April 2005

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Table of contents and scope: June 2005

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Main consultations: June – December 2005

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Draft for approval by ETSI HF: September 2006

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Document publication: November 2006

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Final reporting and closure: December 2006 STF 287 Multicultural Communication 17

Summary

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The ultimate aim is ….

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Removing or reducing cultural/language barriers to give everyone the opportunity to participate in the global information society

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Follow the story at: http://portal.etsi.org/STFs/HF/STF287.asp

and http://stf287.blogspot.com/ STF 287 Multicultural Communication 18