STF 287 Multicultural Communication

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Cultural inclusion in informationand
communications servicesSpecialist Task Force STF
287User-oriented handling of multicultural
issues in multimedia communicationsFunded by
the EC/EFTA

• Mike Pluke, STF leader
• Francoise Petersen
• Derek Pollard
• Bianca Szalai

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eInclusion

• A key eEurope 2005 objective
• to give everyone the opportunity to participate
  in the global information society
• The work of ETSIs STF287
• Seeks to remove or reduce cultural/language
  barriers
• Is therefore fully in support of this objective

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There are two traditional approaches to meeting
users requirements

• Localization
• Personalization

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Localization

• 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

• Traditional localization of information and
  communication services may not help
• a) someone
• communicating with other people or accessing
  services in other countries
• visiting or residing in a country where the
  language is not their native language
• who only speaks a minority language of a country
• who only has a limited vocabulary in their own
  language
• 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

• 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

• The options to specify language and cultural
  settings are usually very limited.
• 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).
• Your chosen settings will apply irrespective of
  what you are doing.
• e.g. your language settings will not change when
  you communicate with someone speaking a different
  language.

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The one simple requirement

• The ultimate requirement for most people is very
  simpleEveryone wants to be able to
  communicate or access information in ways that
  are compatible with their language and cultural
  preferences.
• But meeting this can be very difficult!

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Counterproductive attemptsat cultural adaptation

• Organisations often think that they have solved
  the language and cultural issues with simple
  techniques.
• These may work for a majority of users.
• But for a significant minority they may cause big
  problems e.g.
• 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?

• Localization and Personalization have largely
  followed separate development paths.
• They have used different tools and techniques.
• Effective user profile management will permit
• ..
• Personal localization.
• ..
• 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

• Personal localization will require the ability to
  create, use and manage user profiles in ways
  that
• allow services to obtain information about a
  user's language skills and cultural preferences
• and maintain an appropriate level of user
  privacy.
• Earlier ETSI work on User Profile Management and
  a Universal Communications Identifier support
  this aim and are at the heart of personal
  localization.
• The majority of approaches being recommended by
  STF287 require the personal localization
  approach.

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Approaches that help to achievepersonal
localization
STF287 has seen ways in which all of the
following could be used - singly and together

• 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

• Until it is possible to know what the user needs
  there is no point in having content to meet those
  needs
• The success of personal localization techniques
  should drive the demand for a wider range of
  localized content.
• 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

• Defining levels of language skill and how people
  might assess their own capabilities.
• Storing information about cultural preferences
  and language skills.
• How a service provider can access this
  information to deliver an appropriate version of
  a service to a user.
• and

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and guidance on

• Delivery of content and the handling of user
  input taking account of a range of cultures and
  languages.
• Optimising the match of service options to user
  preferences.
• The use of existing standards and guidelines -
  identifying where new ones need to be developed.
• The incorporation of country-specific legal
  requirements into business ICT provision.

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How we are going to do it

• Identifying existing standards and
  guidelinesincluding ETSI work on User Profile
  Management and a Universal Communications
  Identifier (UCI).
• Extensive consultation with a wide range of
  stakeholders, e.g.
• Globalisation, internationalisation, localisation
  and translation companies
• 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

• Work commenced April 2005
• Table of contents and scope June 2005
• Main consultations June December 2005
• Draft for approval by ETSI HF September 2006
• Document publication November 2006
• Final reporting and closure December 2006

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Summary

• The ultimate aim is .
• Removing or reducing cultural/language barriers
  to give everyone the opportunity to participate
  in the global information society
• Follow the story athttp//portal.etsi.org/STFs/H
  F/STF287.aspand http//stf287.blogspot.com/