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Cultural inclusion in information and

communications services

Michael PlukeCastle Consulting Ltd., Ipswich, UK. / ETSI*, Sophia Antipolis, France

multicultural@etsi.org

Franoise PetersenAPICA, Sophia Antipolis, France / ETSI, Sophia Antipolis, France

Derek PollardParity Resourcing Solutions,London, UK / ETSI, Sophia Antipolis, France

Bianca SzalaiCAS Software AG, Karlsruhe, Germany / ETSI, Sophia Antipolis, France

* ETSI European Telecommunications Standards Institute

Abstract

If you live in America or Western Europe and you speak English, then you have access to and

can understand a wide range of both local and worldwide information and communication

services. If you don't fit this stereotype, and you happen to only understand one of the less

commonly used languages, then your experience will be very different you are only likely to

be able to access services that have been locally produced in the country (or countries) that

speak your language.

Industry tries to prevent their products from being restricted to a single language and region

by offering localized products that are targeted at popular "locales" (combinations of a

language and a region). Whilst this is an improvement, the options that localized applications

offer represent an average of the diverse requirements of the many individuals to whom the

localized product is targeted.

Real users may have very sophisticated language and cultural requirements and these may

change according to the particular context in which the individuals find themselves. The termpersonalization is used to describe techniques that enable a product to be tailored to a user's

individual requirements. Personalization in relation to language or cultural preferences is

usually restricted to letting the user select from a range of options for language and other

culturally dependent factors.

This paper describes how the largely independent approaches of localization and

personalization could be integrated with the User Profile Management techniques developed

by ETSI to create a range of flexible approaches to matching the dynamic language and

cultural preferences of users of communication and information products and services. This

approach can be characterised as the creation of a range of "personal localization" techniques.

Key words: Localization, Personalization, User Profile, Language, Culture, Preferences

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1. Communication and information access in a global context

The European Commission, in its eEurope 2005 initiative [European Commission (2002)],

wished to increase e-inclusion by removing or reducing barriers whether those barriers are

related to disability, language or culture. An eEurope funded Specialist Task Force, calledSTF287 [ETSI (2006)], has been set-up by the European Telecommunications Standards

Institute (ETSI) to study the very varied cultural and language issues that can inhibit effective

delivery and usage of ICT services.

The underlying motivation behind the approach being taken by STF287 is the following

simple statement:

When communicating with another person or accessing an information service,

users wish to do so in a manner compatible with their language and cultural

preferences.

To help to contextualise the proposals now being made by STF287, it is necessary to briefly

introduce two commonly utilized approaches to matching a product or service to a particular

user localization and personalization. These will be briefly introduced in the next two

sections.

This paper gives examples of how issues of culture and language are frequently addressed in

surprisingly inadequate ways - if they are addressed at all. STF287 has already identified

many prototypical instances where cultural or language related issues inhibit the effective

usage of, or delivery of, information and communication services. Many of these derive from

an inability to match the product or service to the context dependent requirements of aspecific user. These will be described in section 4.

It then describes why this is, provides some approaches that will enhance the ways services

are delivered, and then identifies some specific components that can be used to improve this

delivery. The paper also highlights how, if delivery of the correct cultural and linguistic

version of a service is made reliable, it should become more attractive for many more content

and service providers to offer a range of cultural and linguistic variants of their services.

Finally, the approach that is reflected in the recommendations now being made by STF287

will be described. This approach could be described as "personal localization".

2. Localization

People who understand English have access to and can understand a wide range of both local

and worldwide information and communication services. If you don't understand English, and

you happen to only understand one of the less commonly spoken languages, then your

experience will be very different you are only likely to be able to access services that have

been locally produced in the country (or countries) that speak your language. The history of

the internet together with supply and demand can be used to explain this phenomenon, but

such rationalisations should not be excuses for accepting such a high level of exclusion based

on culture and language.

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Industry always tries to broaden the acceptability of their products and services. Offering

alternate language and cultural variants is one way to do so. However, it would be

uneconomic to produce variants for every possible combination of language and cultural

convention. Therefore, the strategy that has been taken by many product and service providers

to alleviate this monocultural approach has been to localize the product or service to a rangeof target "locales". The minimum factors that distinguish a locale are a language and a region:

e.g. English (United States) or French (Canada). The locale specific variant will set the

defaults for language and various culturally dependent preferences (e.g. date format) to the

most commonly used values for those preferences normally chosen by people in that region

whose principal language is that specified by the locale.

These default settings may suit a majority of people for whom this locale is supposed to be

appropriate, but there will be significant numbers of users who will find the settings

inappropriate when they carry out at least some tasks. Examples of such users will be:

- visitors to a region whose language is not covered by one of the standard locales;- people who wish to occasionally communicate with people using a language that is

different to the standard language specified for the locale;

- people who have recently moved to a region and are unfamiliar with the standardconventions in that region for factors such as weights and measures;

- business users carrying out business transactions with a country that has differentcommercial rules and laws to those in their own country.

- etc.

3. Personalization

If a product or service provider has successfully carried out market research and usabilitytesting, their product or service will be the closest possible fit to the typical needs of the target

market for that product or service. However, there may be aspects of the configuration of the

product or service that do not suit the needs or preferences of a specific individual. The

recognition of this variability of individual needs and choices is reflected in the increasing

desire to offer options for the product or service to be configured in such a way that those

needs and preferences are met. The techniques used to allow such personal re-configuration

are usually described under the umbrella term "personalization". The provision of easy and

effective methods to allow a product or service to be personalized is frequently seen as a

highly marketable feature.

Sometimes users are merely given a range of settings which they can manually amend orselect. In other cases users may be assisted in altering groups of related settings by responding

to simple questions in a guided setup procedure. Even more advanced personalization

techniques can propose changes to settings based on an analysis of the user's behaviour.

Irrespective of the means that are used to identify the preferences of a user, these preferences

can only be effectively utilised if they are stored in some form of user profile. Once a user

profile exists, all products and services can, where permitted, read information from it and

change aspects of their behaviour in order to match the needs and preferences that are

expressed in the user's user profile. ETSI has developed and documented [ETSI (2005)] a

comprehensive approach to the use and management of user profiles.

At present, the facilities for personalizing the language and cultural settings of a product orservice are frequently quite limited. In some cases no such personalization may be permitted

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and in others, users may only be allowed to manually select from a small list of languages to

set the language in which the user interface is presented to them.

4. Some unresolved communication and information access challenges

Ensuring that users get a suitable version of a product or service can often be achieved byasking them to select the most appropriate localized version when alternatives are presented to

them. However users will not wish to select the appropriate localized version each time they

visit a new web site or each time they invoke some feature of a communication service.

To avoid placing the entire load on the user, some services attempt to automatically provide

the user with the most appropriate localized service or product function. When the product or

service correctly assesses the version that the user requires, this automated behaviour can

eliminate the load on the user.

Most of the automated methods that are currently used to provide a user with an appropriately

localized version of a service or of a product function are not basing the choice of version onthe actual requirements of the user. Instead, the product or service will use some simple rule

to determine what version to provide. If well chosen the rule may produce a satisfactory

selection for a majority of users, but it is inevitable that some users will not find that the

selection meets their needs. In some cases the automated choice may actually be against the

user's wishes. In the remainder of this section, examples of counterproductive attempts to

meet people's cultural requirements are presented and suggestions for possible alternative

approaches are made.

4.1 Telephony language issues

When phoning abroad and encountering problems, callers often receive warning and

information messages in the language of the country being called which they frequently

cannot understand. Callers will usually prefer to receive all messages in their own language,

irrespective of where they are phoning from or to.

In emergency situations important information can be broadcast to all mobile phones near the

emergency. However, these will only be broadcast in a limited range of languages. The range

of message languages that a phone can receive is limited by a list in the phones SIM card, so

the trend for using temporary local SIM cards can mean that the visitor fails to receive a

potentially life-saving message in their own language.

In both these cases, the language of announcements or messages depends on factors such as

the country that issues the announcement or that issues the SIM card. Sources of information

about the persons individual language preferences or abilities are neither sought nor used.

4.2 Guessing language requirements

Some global services detect that a person is working in a country by inspecting the current IP

address of the computer accessing the service. From this location-related information the

service then makes the assumption that the user wants the service in the language associated

with that location. If the user accesses the service while in France, they are presented with the

French language version of the service.

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The above assumptions will usually produce good results for the native inhabitants of the

country where the computer is located. However, for people temporarily resident in a country

or for those travelling with a laptop, the IP address related language assumptions can make

very inappropriate assumptions.

For the laptop user who travels, the user actually carries their personal language preferences

with them in the form of the language to which the user interface of their laptop is set.

Various technical and privacy issues may prevent a service from knowing these accurate user

preferences, but it is ironic that the service uses a source for user preference data that is

completely unrelated to the individual user.

4.3 Text messaging

When someone uses the menus in their mobile phone to choose the language for their mobile

phone's user interface the language used for predicting and completing words in text messages

is usually set the same. When the user only communicates in one language, the rule that setsthe dictionary language to be the same value as the user interface language, works well. In all

other cases, the situation is much more complex.

People who send messages in a number of different languages need to make use of a

predictive text language menu to select the language they need to use when communicating

with a particular person. However, it will be very irritating for the user to have to use this

menu on a very regular basis. Outside of the English speaking countries, every person will

need to select English for many business messages and select another language when

communicating with friends.

The appropriate predictive text language depends on a complex combination of factors suchas the context of use and the identity of the other person. The context of use is important as

two people may choose a different language in which to communicate depending on whether

the communication is in a business or a private context. These requirements point to solutions

that use stored information about the correct language to be used for each person or group of

people. Storing this information as part of a persons address book entry is one promising

option to consider.

5. Personal localization

A product that is configured with the standard settings for a locale will not have all of the

language and culturally dependent settings configured to suit the needs of every person who isusing that version. Even where the standard settings suit an individual's use of a product or

service for the majority of times that they wish to use it, there may be circumstances when

very different alternatives may be required. The example, in section 4.3, of sending a text

message in a different language to that set for the user interface of a mobile phone is a case

where the standard localized settings do not meet the user's needs in a particular usage

context.

One underlying difficulty in introducing services aimed at a wider range of cultures and

languages is identifying which cultural and linguistic variants will suit each particular user.

One approach is to rely on the user to choose the variant that they require by using some form

of language menu. This makes every user's task more difficult in order to help a subset ofusers. An alternative is for the system to try to infer the needs of the user. Although this

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eliminates additional user tasks, it could also render a service unusable if it wrongly selected a

language of which the user had no understanding. The examples in section 4 give some

typical examples of where this approach fails. Nevertheless, some major service providers use

this approach today and the difficulties experienced by some users can be very significant.

Potential solutions to providing the language and cultural settings that the user needs in each

different usage scenario rely on the service being given clear information about the actual

skills and requirements of a user. At present, one of the biggest barriers to the delivery of

services that are tailored to an individual user's language and cultural requirements is the fact

that many communication and information services have no means of identifying these

requirements. If the product or service has this information it then allows it to respond by

delivering content and service options that match those skills and requirements. User profiles

that contain details of a user's language and cultural skills and requirements are fundamental

to achieving this aim.

Methods to create, use, and manage user profiles in ways that allow services to obtaininformation about a user's language skills and cultural preferences in ways that maintain an

appropriate level of user privacy will be required. ETSI's work on "User Profile Management"

[ETSI (2005)] and on a "Universal Communications Identifier (UCI)" [ETSI (2002), Pluke et

al. (2003), Pluke (2004)] have explored ways in which user profile data can be made available

to information and communication services and also maintain user privacy.

Solutions that combine the techniques of localization and personalization are at the heart of

the majority of approaches being recommended by STF287. It may be helpful to think of such

a combination of techniques as part of a new concept of "personal localization".

6. STF287's approaches

By consulting widely with a range of service providers, standards bodies and other

organisations, STF287 has begun to identify many potentially powerful new approaches to the

effective deployment of multicultural/multilingual services. This consultation has highlighted

how delivery of multilanguage/multicultural services could be effectively supported by

combining techniques and standards from a wide range of different disciplines, including:

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.

The trend in the localization industry is to minimize the amount of repeated translation of

similar text by combining the use of techniques such as:

translation memory;

terminology databases; automatic translation of the text presented to translators;

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European Commission COM 263 (2002). eEurope 2005: An information society for all.

Pluke, M. (2004). ETSIs Universal Communications Identifier (UCI) from its origins to its

diverse benefits. Telektronikk 1.2004

Pluke, M. et al. (2003). Bringing benefits to the disadvantaged by providing flexibility for all.

Proceedings of Human Factors in Telecommunications 2003, Berlin