EUNoM – Ljouwert 18 November 2010

Rita Temmerman Erasmushogeschool Brusselhttp://cvc.ehb.be

PLURILINGUAL TERMINOLOGICAL COMPETENCES IN SPECIALIZED DOMAINS: A COMPETITIVE

ADVANTAGE?

THEME 2

The contribution that universities in general and the EUNoM network in particular can make to the development of the Council of Europe’s and the European Commission’s language policies, especially to the EU’s 8th Framework Programme.

SHIFT FROM STANDARDISATION TO REALISM

In today’s working environments patterns of linguistic diversity can be observed.

Evidence proves that on the workfloor in many European regions, a range of different languages and language variants are constantly in use, even if there is an agreement on one or more lingue franche.

Mutual understanding is more important than correctness.

Attitudes on standardised national languages and cultural purity belong more and more to the past.

As things stand, we know far too little about the impact of monolingualism - as compared to multilingualism and plurilingualism - on the dynamics of understanding and knowledge.

WHAT WE MEAN BY PLURILINGUALISM

The ability to understand and communicate in at least one situational setting in several languages (codes) and in an intercultural reality (functional multilingualism)

e.g. in a hospital setting in Brussels a nurse can explain how to prepare for a medical intervention in 5 languages (Spanish, French, Dutch, Arabic, Turkish)

e.g. in a bureaucratic setting in Ljouwert an administrative assistant can help citizens who know Spanish or Turkish to fill out forms that exist in 2 languages (Frysk, Dutch) because he/she knows the terminology that occurs on these forms in Spanish and Turkish as well

RESEARCH Themes like:

Linguistic diversity as a variant of biodiversity

Language planning and language management theory

Society/problem-driven plurilingualism

More interdisciplinary research is needed

Research methodologies

action research

experience based research

Research settings

In corporate-academic partnership

RESEARCH ON LANGUAGE MANAGEMENT

We need more research on the acquisition of plurilingual competences.

e.g. we need research aimed at facilitating the accelerated learning of specialised language skills (e.g. multilingual terminology) related to languages that already form part of a given learner’s repertoire (CASE 1).

Corporate-academic partnerships are needed to enhance the resolving of societal problems related to communication problems in intercultural and multilingual settings (field specialists)

Universities require programmes combining language study and acquisition with the study of other disciplines and they should engage in interdisciplinary research undertaken jointly by language specialists collaborating with e.g. sociologists, political scientists, medical scientists, economists, educationalists, etc.

e.g. research on the dynamics of terminological variation in European multilingual communication and on aspects of languages(s) and creativity from an interdisciplinary perspective is an asset (CASE 2).

NATIONAL (POLITICAL) AND SITUATIONAL LANGUAGE PLANNING

Language planning (LP) as a field of theoretical and applied research began with decolonisation and the subsequent nationhood of former colonies in the 1950s and 1960s.

A strong sociolinguistic interest in domains and functions of use led to the belief that language could be planned (Ricento 2000), and more and more linguists developed grammars for the languages of newly autonomous nations.

Because of its origins, LP discourses and research have connected to, and were limited by, language-nation typologies.

ORGANISATIONAL LANGUAGE PLANNING

Governments used to engage in language planning mainly for political (power) purposes

Local (corporate) organisations need to cater for multilingual communication in order to be able to provide quality of service An example: health care in multilingual and

multicultural situations in line with the mission statement and values of a hospital

CASE 1 PLURILINGUALISM IN HEALTH CARE

Language liaisons: Case study on Children’s Medical Center of Dallas

Chris Allen Thomas & Brett Lee “Language liaisons. Language planning leadership in health care“Language Problems & Language Planning 34:2 (2010), 95–119.

LANGUAGE LIAISONS PROJECT

communication barriers due to linguistic and cultural divergence limit the effective delivery of quality medical care

linguistic barriers cause ineffective transmission of medical information

This can lead to poor-quality health care and may even result in significant risk to the wellbeing of patients:

EXCLUSION

MISSION STATEMENT AND VALUES

the right of all patients to receive equal access to medical care, regardless of their language proficiency

CONSEQUENCE:

A need for organisational language policy in a health care network

PROBLEM-DR IVEN INTERDISC IPL INARY RESEARCH AND ACT ION RESEARCH

Thomas & Lee (2010) reports on the effectiveness of a language liaison program implemented by Children’s

A language policy inclusive of its Spanish-speaking patients and their families in the SW of the USA

English proved to be insufficient to adequately complete patient medical histories or explain treatment procedures.

Children’s hospital engaged in language planning to develop its employees and serve its patients

Data for this case study came from a variety of sources:

stakeholder interviews

focus group interviews with the parents of hospital patients (children)

internal corporate documents

quality control surveys focusing on communication effectiveness.

LANGUAGE MANAGEMENT THEORY (LMT)

Competitive organizations ensure their survival through:

quality control measures

human capital development

the elimination of barriers to the usefulness of the goods and services they provide.

Research into the effects of language policies is also relevant to the field of human resources, not only to linguistics or sociolinguistics.

There is a need for Language Management Theory (LMT) (as opposed to Language Planning)

THREE POSSIBILITIES FOR OVERCOMING COMMUNICATION

PROBLEMS IN HOSPITALS

1. Medical interpreters (community interpreting)

2. Implication of bilingual staff

3. The language liaison project

POSSIBILITY 1: MEDICAL INTERPRETING

Some health care institutions are addressing the need for intercultural communicators and interpreters.

They are committed to:

providing the highest quality of care

their interpreters provide accurate and complete interpretation services

they deliver culturally competent care and facilitate access to hospital services for non-English- or limited-English-proficient patients

POSSIBILITY 2:TO RELY ON BILINGUAL STAFF

With wait times for qualified interpreters at an unacceptable level, care centres rely on bilingual staff members to provide ad-hoc interpreting.

This practice introduced medical and legal risk to the organisation, since speaking Spanish in the home does not adequately prepare an employee to provide complex medical interpreting.

Studies have shown that bilingual staff members providing interpreting without adequate training and certification make significantly more errors than professional interpreters, and the errors made may have clinical consequences

POSSIBILITY 3: LANGUAGE LIAISON PROGRAMME

All bilingual staff at Children’s hospital in Dallas were given the opportunity to sit for the interpreter qualification examination to determine their ability to safely provide medical interpreting when a staff interpreter was not available

A SMAL SET OF MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY

Each clinic routinely treated a relatively narrow scope of diagnoses (compared to the inpatient hospital), so bilingual employees could master a smaller set of medical terminology and still provide safe interpreting.

LOCAL AND NATIONAL POLITICAL SUPPORT

In Texas, bill HB 233 passed into law in 2009, creating an advisory panel to develop training and certification standards for individuals providing medical interpreting within the state.

The International Medical Interpreters Association (IMIA) is leading an effort to create a national certification program for medical interpreters.

CURRICULUM The areas of focused instruction in this

programme were defined as follows:

medical terminology, culture and medicine, legal and ethical issues related to interpreting,

anatomy and physiology, diseases and conditions, tests and treatments,

and the use of formal (rather than idiomatic) Spanish

COMPETENCIES REQUIRED

Upon completion of the course, trainees are expected to be able to demonstrate:

appropriate interpreting techniques

understand the United States code of medical ethics

utilize medical terminology appropriately

demonstrate basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology.

demonstrate understanding of ethical responsibility

RESEARCH IN CORPORATE-BASED LEARNING

Examples like the one just discussed should be the focus of future research in corporate-based learning

The targeted skill in the example was the ability to facilitate doctor-patient communication through the development of English and Spanish for medical interpreting

CASE 2 RESEARCH ON: THE DYNAMICS OF TERMINOLOGICAL

VARIATION IN EUROPEAN MULTILINGUAL COMMUNICATION

societal dynamics in the European multilingual reality: e.g. what happens to metaphorical and evocative language in translated texts on invasion ecology?

Parameters explaining terminological variation can be retrieved from textual archives of a discipline.

We have been reading and analysing a number of publications in the discipline of invasion ecology in order to:

try and understanding the parameters that make specialists prone to linguistic variation

search parameters in the creation process (in English) of neologisms in scientific debates, controversies and negotiations in .

get insight in the creative potential of language as a cognitive and rhetorical tool

Our objective was to try and find the parameters that lead to variation in terminology and dynamics of ideas as they are explicitly mentioned by field specialists giving surveyed information on the development of their discipline.

REFLECTIVE TEXT FRAGMENTS

Zooming in on terminological discussions between field specialists, we discovered how specialists point out the weaknesses of the terminology used in their field and go into debate on the pros and cons of using particular terms. In doing so, they unintentionally reveal a number of parameters that account for dynamics and variation.

We found “background impact factors” that set the scene for the development of terminology in invasive ecology and the importance of terminological discussions in a scientific debate culture on the same subject .

PARAMETERS THAT ACCOUNT FOR DYNAMICS AND VARIATION .

Metaphorical language

evocative language,

Awareness of connotations of words,

Provocative language in order to capture the attention of the world at large and most specifically of policy makers.

TERMINOLOGICAL DISCUSSIONS IN A SCIENTIFIC DEBATE CULTURE

Research is often conducted within a larger social milieu of contentious environmental values and politics. Consequently discussions take place in an emotionally charged and intellectually dynamic environment where controversy and disagreements thrive.

INVASIVE SPECIES TERMINOLOGY IN TRANSLATED EUROPEAN TEXTS

If in the European Union, Euro-English has become the lingua franca and if Europeans continue to have the right to information in all official European languages the issue of approximate meaning will have to be tackled all the time.

We studied some examples (inspired by an ongoing project on variation (Kerremans et al. 2008 & 2010)) on how European texts on invasive species get translated from English into French and Dutch.

The examples we give here are from a European Council document (2008). We have confirmation that the English text was the source text and the French and Dutch versions are translations.

In this text invasive species is defined. The terminology used in the definition is elaborated on in the text giving rise to terminological variation. This is the case in the English source text and even more so in the translations.

Research on anisomorphism between languages and secondary term formation in translation as related to European discourse is interesting.

ANISOMORPHISM AND APPROXIMATE MEANING

The reasons why translations are hardly ever a word for word transfer from a source language to a target language have been dealt with extensively in the literature on translation theory.

Basically, translation shifts like e.g. modulation and transposition, are often the result of the inherent lexical and structural limitations of each language.

Moreover each language carries historical and cultural elements that allow its users to express messages in particular ways (e.g. figurative language based on metaphorical understanding, allusions to culture-specific elements).

EXAMPLE 1: VARIATION OF INVASIVE SPECIES IN ENGLISH, FRENCH AND DUTCH

IN [SEC(2008) 2887 ET SEC(2008) 2886]English French Dutch

Invasive Species or IS espèces envahissantes, ou EE INVASIEVE SOORTEN (IS)

non-native species espèces non indigènes uitheemse soorten

it was recognized that "a comprehensive EU strategy should be developed" tosubstantially reduce the impact on EU Biodiversity of invasive alien species

qui reconnaissaient la nécessité d’«élaborer une stratégie globale au niveau de l'UE» afin de réduire sensiblement l'impact des espèces allogènes envahissantes sur la diversité biologique de l'Union européenne.

actieplan, waarin wordt erkend dat “een alomvattende EU-strategie” moet worden uitgewerkt om te zorgen voor “een aanzienlijke vermindering van de impact van invasieve uitheemse soorten op de biodiversiteit binnen de EU”.

EXAMPLE 2: HITCHHIKER ORGANISMS AND SECONDARY TERM FORMATION

Prevention: There are six principal pathways for IS:

Prévention:On dénombre six grandes voies d'introduction des EE:

Preventie: De introductie van IS kan in hoofdzaak via zes mechanismen plaatsvinden:

release, lâcher, door opzettelijk uitzetten,

escape, fuite, door ontsnapping,

contaminant, contamination, als contaminant,

hitchhiker, passage clandestin, als verstekeling,

corridor couloir via een corridor

and ou en

unaided introduction spontanée door toeval ("op eigen kracht")

Prevention in relation to hitchhiker organisms brought in on the hulls or in the ballast water of ships would hugely benefit from the ratification and implementation of the Ballast Water Convention.

La ratification et la mise en œuvre de la convention sur les eaux de ballast seraient essentielles à la prévention en ce qui concerne les organismes qui voyagent clandestinement sur les coques des navires ou dans les eaux de ballast de ceux-ci.

Preventie vande introductie van door zeeschepen meegebrachte "verstekelingen" zal een stuk makkelijker worden zodra het internationaal ballastwaterverdrag wordt geratificeerd en in de praktijkgebracht.

EXAMPLE 3: FREE MODULATION AND EXPLICITATION

The main identified costs in Europe comprise eradication and control costs and damage to agriculture, forestry, commercial fisheries, infrastructure and human health.

Les principaux coûts recensés en Europe sont liés à l'éradication et à la lutte contre les EE, ainsi qu'aux dommages causés dans l'agriculture, la sylviculture et la pêche commerciale, dans les infrastructures et en matière de santé humaine.

De belangrijkste gesignaleerde kostenposten in Europa zijn bestrijdingsmaatregelen(uitroeiing of regulering van IS) en schade aan landbouw, bosbouw, commerciële visserij, infrastructuur en de menselijke gezondheid.

IN DUTCH: The translator decided to add a hyperonym of uitroeiing of regulering van IS: bestrijdingsmaatregelen. This is an example of optional modulation and explicitation.

The three examples illustrate that the translated texts, like the Euro-English originals show variability and have characteristics of the dynamics and plasticity of all living languages.

They also show that readers of the texts in translation find the same information, but not quite, as there is asymmetry between languages.

At the same time these examples of interlinguistic anisomorphisms show that communication involving several languages is not likely to cause huge problems.

A EUROPEAN FIELD OF STUDY

In today’s transcultural and multilingual European Union,

we have a laboratory of diversity, inter- and transcultural variation and dynamics in a plurilingual environment.

A lot of European discourse in several languages is available on the internet.

Researchers engaging in contrastive linguistics, translation studies and terminology studies have access to materials for studying variation and secondary term formation in all European languages as related to primary term formation in English.

We suggest that given the fact that Euro-English has become the main lingua franca in the European Union, the study of variation, dynamics and standardisation of European terminology will have to distinguish between two tracks.

On the first track the negotiations on European terminology in policy-making processes, mostly happening in Euro-English at an encompassing-European level, needs observation and analysis.

On the second track, the translation of European texts into all official European languages involving finding ways to express the European content in all languages needs detailed analysis.

There are many immanent research questions on both tracks for researchers in terminology wanting to bring about a better understanding of terminological diversity, variation and standardization in the Euro-English area and on secondary term formation in all European languages.

DIVERSITY MUST SERVE A PURPOSE

For Evans & Levinson (2009) language diversity is a crucial fact for understanding the place of language in human cognition. In their opinion the belief in language universals i.e. “the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern” (429) is a fallacy.

They point out how diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization and how this fact changes the object of inquiry altogether from looking for universals to studying the diversity offered to us by the world’s languages (estimated to number between 6000 and 8000).

They remind us that each language has built-in cultural-historical factors and implies opportunities and constraints for human cognition.

From this perspective, exciting new research directions become apparent pertaining to the power of and the reasons for diversity, variation and dynamics in languages.

Their position also calls for a redefinition of the phenomenon of standardization in language. The European Union offers many possibilities for interesting research and case studies given that there are 23 different official languages and that Europe is now confronted with the extraordinary plasticity of plurilingual and intercultural communication.

PLURILINGUALISM AND MULTILINGUALISM: A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE IN RESEARCH

We presented some ideas on how plurilingualism and cultural diversity in the educational setting can lead to competitive advantages for Europeans in higher education

Case 1: plurilingual language liaison competences

Case 2: European content in all languages

Thank you!

Merci!

Dank u wel!

Gracias!

Tankje!

Tapadh leibh! (Scottish)

Go raibh maith agaibh! (Irish)