JCMC 9 (1) November 2003
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APEC Multilingual International Trade Project:
Methodology and Case Reports on Needs Assessment

James Ho
University of Illinois at Chicago

Abstract


As Internet use continues to grow worldwide, its potential to facilitate e-commerce and international trade, especially among small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), is well recognized. However, formidable barriers in language and word processing have to be overcome before significant uptake of such computer-mediated communication by SMEs can be realized. A pragmatic methodology to enable multilingual e-mail communication is introduced, in a prototype system called "TigerTalk for SMEs." This approach has been endorsed by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) as the Multilingual International Trade Project. The first phase of needs and feasibility assessment is reported in eight case studies.

Introduction: The Language of e-Trade


It is a common perception that English has become the lingua franca for business communication. The trend seems even more apparent when personal computers, which started out running only on English-based operating systems, began to find their way into offices and onto desktops around the world. Keyboards are still designed primarily for the English alphabet. The ASCII encoding of text has for a long while been the lone standard, making it inconvenient if not impossible to write e-mail in languages other than English. As a result, non-English speakers have been handicapped by having to use a language that would obviously not be their first choice. This language barrier can be a significant deterrent to the effective adoption of business e-mail (Gilbert et al, 1999). A periodic survey conducted by WorldLingo (2001) found that 88.93% of the world's largest companies respond incorrectly to foreign language e-mail inquiries.

The continuing dominance of English on the Internet is coming into question (Wallraff, 2000; Warschauer et al., 2002), now that computers can operate in many different languages. As estimated by the Networks and Development Foundation (Pimienta, 2001), the percentage of Web pages in English dropped from 75 percent in September 1998 to 50 percent by August 2001. As access to the Internet becomes more affordable, Web content in local languages, driven by market demand, tends to proliferate. Indeed, it is easier to get online than to learn English for non-speakers worldwide. According to Global Reach (2002), a marketing consultancy which has been tracking non-English online populations since 1995, non-English speaking Internet users exceeded English speaking users by March, 2002, and the gap will continue to widen dramatically in the remainder of the decade. While English speaking Internet users will grow by 60 percent during the next six years, the non-English speaking market will grow by 150 percent (Pastore, 1999). The language groups that will most significantly overshadow English are those in Asia Pacific and Latin America. This trend is creating tremendous market demand for e-mail tools to facilitate global business communication in a multi-lingual, multi-cultural environment (Cha, 1997).

While the trend is clear that non-English speaking users will dominate the Internet, the debate on whether everyone will be better off if we can all communicate in a common language, like English, is far from settled (Kimbrough, 1998). Note that even as the majority, non-English speakers are highly fragmented. It is not the case that they all just speak another language. For them, it is well known and well accepted that to be able to communicate with the rest of the world, there is no better way than learning English. In reality, how effectively that can be accomplished on a global basis remains to be seen. It is safe to say that for the foreseeable future, it will be much easier for non-English speakers to gain access to the Internet than for them to become proficient in English. A good rule of thumb is that whatever language people choose to read their newspaper (or online news-cast) in, we may assume to be their language of choice. For English speaking businesses of any size, there is distinct advantage if they can communicate with prospective customers and partners in their preferred language. Given current demographics and economics, Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese are the most likely candidates.

The Status of Machine Translation


Translation of free form text from one language to another using software has come a long way. Free services are available on the Web for instant translation of passages or entire Web sites. In general, the results are adequate to give a rough idea of the target content. Typically, the glitches range from being mildly amusing to outright silliness. Below is an example of machine translation from French to English:

We are a team of experts in international trade controlling perfectly, thanks to its great experiment the answers to the needs for the French-speaking countries. Wine industries, the Administrations, Tourism, Hotel trade, the services of state such as the producers of electricity, the companies of water treatment, and transportation call upon us and we let us bring the solutions to them until they wait.

Apart from the somewhat awkward syntax throughout, the last part, which really meant "solutions they are looking for", is misleading. In any case, we are not yet at a stage of development that machine translation can be relied on for business transactions (Kay, 1996).

Word Processing & Routine Correspondence


In replying to or composing new e-mail, basic word processing skill is required. This brings up an interesting observation. It is well known that business executives, especially those at senior ranks, have been slow to pick up the use of computers. It turns out that the one big obstacle is the keyboard. First, most of them cannot type. Second, they do not deign to, because "Secretaries type, executives don't!" Unfortunately, the keyboard has been and still is the primary interface between people and computers. Therefore, how well one can master e-mail depends to some extent on how well one can type. Certainly, fast and accurate touch-typing can greatly expedite the use of e-mail. But less proficient typing skill, down to using a single finger, can also get one started. Realizing the liberating effects of e-mail from conventional constraints of time and place, many executives are abandoning the stereotype. It is now a common sight to see them tapping away on airplanes, or at their own desks.

As typing on a keyboard has become synonymous with working with a computer, we learn to live with this man-machine interface, not that it is a natural or logical choice. At least with alphabetic languages such as English, the input process, while nontrivial to master, is straightforward. One simply finds the required character on the keyboard and types it in. In languages with more complex writing, such as the ideograms in Chinese, word processing becomes significantly more complicated. The learning curve to acquire proficiency steepens. For example, there is no alphabet to spell out words in Chinese. Although phonetic symbols can be used to represent the pronunciation of a word, the system is not widely learned since it is not an integral part of the written language. In any case, many words may share the same pronunciation. This means there can be no unique and logical method of input in word processing. Indeed, quite a few systems have sprung up. They are mostly based on two approaches. In one, the keyboard is arranged for radicals of the ideograms. Keying in a radical brings up a menu of words containing that radical. The user searches for and selects the one desired. Since there can be thousands of unique characters in a working vocabulary, most word groups must be associated with combinations of the radicals. In the other approach, menus of word groups are invoked by pronunciation. Again, there are various systems to indicate pronunciation, with many using phonemes spelled in the English alphabet. This way, the standard keyboard can be used. In any case, substantial training and practice is necessary for any degree of proficiency.

Meanwhile, most business-to-business correspondence is routine by nature, involving the permutation of elements that, with due diligence, can be distilled and organized. In conventional clerical work, such patterns are not at all exploited. Instead, much work is involved with repetitious keying of the basic elements. While standardized forms, form letters, and mail merging have helped, they have not done so to a significant extent in the case of business e-mail. In this regard, it is useful to point out the essential changes that took us from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. The former is epitomized by the factory model of mass production, assembly lines, and division of labor. Production processes are broken down into sequential tasks. Time and motion studies are used to determine standards on performance of such tasks by workers who specialized in repeating them efficiently. The military tradition of top-down command and control fits well and has become entrenched in this setting. Interestingly enough, this model has essentially been transplanted to office work. Top-down management with compartmentalized task assignments is still largely the norm. What is driving changes in the Information Age is that with ever more knowledgeable and discerning consumers, the focus has shifted from management by the numbers to the customer. From economies of scale, the key success factors have become flexibility and responsiveness to customer and market needs. Mass production is giving way to mass customization (Ho, 2000).

In the emerging global, networked economy, it does not make sense to assign routine, repetitive tasks to so-called knowledge workers. Anyone who is capable of working with computers and learning word processing should be put to more value-adding and productive tasks than simply typing. Being more attentive to individual needs of customers and deciding on more specific responses would be a good example. To make room for such changes, we must be able to reduce the amount of routine work.

To see how this argument extends beyond the front-line level of work, let us examine how postal mail is typically processed in a company. Arriving letters are sorted and delivered to the inbox of appropriate personnel. They are then read to determine a proper course of action, and responded to after the necessary decisions are made. Such a process is time-consuming and is usually delegated to support staff to conserve the resources of senior management. This leads to a bottom-up approach to information management. Starting at the level with the least authority, a case does not need to go to a higher level if it can readily be resolved. A simple request for a catalog can be dealt with easily. An inquiry about current prices may have to go through marketing. A negotiation about a volume discount may go all the way to the top. Similarly with customer complaints: a trivial one can evoke a stock response, while more serious concerns must be directed to a higher level. Ironically, while the power structure is firmly top-down, the decision regarding who gets to see communications coming into the system is actually bottom-up. This explains why top management can often be out of touch with what customers think and how they behave. It does not take many layers of management for this effect to set in, so that even SMEs are not exempt.

A more structured and semi-automatic approach to business e-mail can screen incoming correspondence. Before it is forwarded for routine processing at a particular level, specific keywords, phrases, or patterns can be set to alert higher-level management. Suppose customer complaints are to be handled by the service department. However, as top management is pondering future plans for a particular product at the moment, it wishes to be alerted to all customer feedback on that product. This can be accomplished without affecting the work process of support departments by scanning incoming e-mail for reference to the product and sending a copy to the top. It is in this context that tools and systems to automate the commonplace elements in business correspondence by e-mail can lead to competitive advantage.

A Methodology for Business e-Mail


The holy grail of seamless communication is of course spontaneous translation with voice recognition: one party speaks in one language, and is understood by the other in another language. How far are we from such an ideal? On July 22, 1999, research scientists at the Consortium for Speech Translation Advanced Research (C-STAR) demonstrated a spontaneous-translation computer in six languages. They communicated with one another in their native languages from locations in six countries (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, and United States) using the Web-based language translation system. The teleconference featured a German scientist talking to a computer that recognized, transcribed, translated, and then synthetically verbalized the words in another language, such as Korean (C-STAR Consortium, 1999).

To improve upon earlier speech recognition systems the consortium developed mechanisms to filter out sloppy speech and slurred pronunciation that had been problematic for such missions. Even with all the sophisticated advances since the volunteer organization began collaboration in 1991, the researchers had to restrict the demonstration to a single, specific, and well structured topic of discussion, which on this occasion was travel planning. The scientists hoped eventually to expand the system to include spontaneous translations of telephone calls, films, and business meetings. But they did not expect commercialization of the technology for another five to ten years. An example of more recent advances based on knowledge-based machine translation is the KANT project at Carnegie Mellon University (Nyberg, 2002).

How about here and now? This is the challenge posed by the language and word processing barriers discussed above. By examining the trade-off, we show that a pragmatic approach can indeed be developed. If we insist on free form text, then little can be done. Restricting what we can say, but allowing rich enough a mix to serve our purposes, we can design menu-driven systems that include hard-wired translations that require mostly pointing and clicking, hence little or no typing.

The first prototype service based on this concept is TigerTalk[sm], which is offered free on the Web site www.cyber-tigers.com. Concise correspondence involving variations and combinations of the themes of Introduction, Presentation, Inquiry, Price Quote, Ordering, Response, etc. can be composed in one language, and sent as e-mail in another. Conversion among Chinese (traditional and simplified), English, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Spanish, Polish are curretnly supported, with more to come in the near future including Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Indonesian, and Thai.

A Conceptual Framework for the Methodology


To many with an early exposure to the subject, e-commerce is synonymous with EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), which is the automation of business-to-business transactions with the exchange of electronic documents over private, secure networks. Instead of the mailing or faxing of paper documents (requests for price quotes, purchase orders, invoices, shipping notices, dispatch advises, delivery and payment receipts, etc.), electronic data files encoding such information are transmitted from computer to computer among businesses, government, and financial institutions. EDI has been used mainly by large companies to streamline transactions with smaller suppliers. Due to the complexity of formatting standards, and the reliance on proprietary communication networks, the adoption of EDI adds a layer of costs and technical barriers to the business operations of most SMEs, which are as yet not sophisticated enough to benefit from computer-to-computer communication (Iacovou et al., 1995). Consequently, in over five decades of development, EDI has met with much resistance among SMEs (Suzuki & Williams, 1998). Easy-to-use, Web-based EDI, with all the technical complexities transparent to the user, may be the key to promoting e-commerce among SMEs (Ho, 2000). The TigerTalk approach can be regarded as a rudimentary effort in such a direction.

Natural Language Generation (NLG) is the production of understandable texts in a human language from some underlying non-linguistic representation of information, using knowledge about language and the application domain (Reiter & Dale, 2000). A classic example is weather reports. The significant information that needs to be conveyed is in the form of numerical data for the measurement of temperature, atmospheric pressure, precipitation, wind velocity, etc. Entries in a database may contain "March" for "Month", "5 inches" for "Rainfall", "1.3 inches" for "Average." The task of NLG would be to generate a sentence such as: "Rainfall in March, at 5 inches, was well above average." The intent is for the textual report in natural language to be a more readily comprehensible as well as a more versatile conveyor of meaning and nuances than the raw data. In our context of business correspondence, the essential data required to specify a transaction, as can be represented by EDI, is analogous to the weather measurements. Whereas a textual e-mail in natural language can help express, for instance, the degree of gratitude depending on the promptness of payment. One received within one week may elicit "Thank you very much for the prompt payment...", while a more tardy one may simply be greeted with "This is to acknowledge receipt of your payment...."

In this approach, multilingual exchanges become parallel tasks in NLG, rather than in machine translation (Bateman, 1997). In the case of a weather report, the Canadian Weather Service of Environment Canada has been using a system called FoG (Forecast Generator) since 1993 to generate textual reports in English and French from meteorological data (Golberg et al., 1994). The most recent example is PILLS (Patient Information Language Localization System), a European system that produces a range of pharmaceutical documents in English, German and French (Bouayad-Agha et al., 2002). The same non-linguistic input data is used to drive parallel NLG systems in the required languages. There is actually no machine translation involved in the routine operation of the systems. Similarly, TigerTalk uses EDI-type data to generate multilingual e-mails. At the prototype level, our extent of NLG is limited to the use of prescribed templates. In other words, generality is traded off for accuracy by restriction to a known domain. Obviously, further development can draw on the extensive body of knowledge and active research in NLG. In this sense, the TigerTalk approach, which guarantees perfect accuracy by limiting the translatable text to pre-defined templates useful in routine business transactions, can be considered as a special case of multilingual NLG, as well as a convergence of EDI and NLG.

A Prototype of the Methodology: the TigerTalk for SMEs e-Mail System


The methodology is best illustrated with a functional prototype known as "TigerTalk for SMEs" that is freely available on the World Wide Web. The following is a simple example of using the system.

i) Access TigerTalk

A user connects to the Internet and points a browser to the URL http://www.cyber-tigers.com/tigertalk.html.

ii) Select Working Language

The user clicks on the passage in the working language of choice. In the following, English is selected for illustration. TigerTalk functions similarly in all the other supported languages.

iii) Select Target Language

A menu of target languages is presented. The user selects the one in which an e-mail is to be translated and sent. In this example, Chinese (simplified), which uses the GB format commonplace in mainland China, is selected. The top of the Web page is now as shown in Figure 1.



Figure 1. Web interface for TigerTalk.

iv) Compose e-mail

First, the e-mail address of the recipient is entered. The system checks for an entry in the generic format for such addresses: xxx@yyy.zzz. If one simply types in "John", for instance, it will return an error warning and ask the user to try again. However, it would not know whether a valid-looking address is actually correct, so the user is responsible for making sure that it is.

Similarly, the e-mail address of the sender is entered, which must be correct if a reply is expected from the recipient. In the example, it is from you@company.com to buyer@overseas.com (see Figure 2).



Figure 2. Dialog box for sender and recipient e-mail addresses.

Next, a theme is selected for processing by clicking in the "Check Box" in its heading. The system warns if the user failed to select at least one theme. The various themes can be mixed and matched, and selected in any order. The combinations serve a sufficient variety of purposes so that TigerTalk, even at its most basic level, can be of practical use.

v) Simple case of Introduction

Typical of initial contact, an introduction is included. Each box showing "PLEASE SELECT" is a pull-down menu. The blank boxes are for optional information that has to be typed in. Such input is used in the e-mail without translation. When working in languages other than English, only alphanumeric data can be used in these boxes.



Figure 3. Menu selection.


In the example, the selections are made as in Figure 4.



Figure 4. Example of menu selection.

vi) Preview e-mail

To see what has been composed so far, the user clicks on the "Preview" button near the bottom of the page. The top of the Web page now appears as in Figure 5.



Figure 5. Preview of e-mail.


If any changes are desired, the user clicks on "Return to Edit" to go back to the composition form, switching back and forth as necessary until the the e-mail is ready to be sent.

vii) Send e-mail

The user clicks on "Send Mail". A message is returned indicating that "e-mail has been successfully sent."

What the recipient sees, the translated e-mail in Chinese, is shown in Figure 6. Since the recipient gets this message in Chinese, it is not obvious what the sender's working language is. Even if this is known, the recipient may not be capable in general of replying in that language. Here is how TigerTalk can be of real help. A footnote tells the recipient how he or she can respond in Chinese and have the reply translated into English for the sender by using the free service at Cyber Tigers Online.

In this way, TigerTalk can open doors to cross-cultural communication, especially for larger companies interested in doing business with SMEs worldwide, and vice versa. Even without the need for translation, when the working language is the same as the target language (e.g. from Chinese to Chinese), this approach relieves the message sender from repetitious word processing. In languages with complex keyboard inputting procedures, such as those in Asia and the Middle East, this can be a considerable boost to productivity, especially for SMEs.



Figure 6. Example of e-mail sent in Chinese.


The basic architecture of the TigerTalk system is depicted in Figure 7:



Figure 7. Basic architecture of TigerTalk.

The APEC Multilingual International Trade Project


Governments worldwide are well aware of the significance of e-commerce to the future development of their economies. Most of them are allocating substantial resources to promote and facilitate its adoption, especially among SMEs. The TigerTalk methodology to overcome language and word processing barriers to e-commerce has been recognized and endorsed by the 21-country Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). It is in the form of The APEC Multilingual International Trade Project under the auspices of the Telecommunications Working Group (APEC TEL) and sponsored by the Australia-based Asia Oceania Electronic Marketplace Association (AOEMA). The purpose of the project is the continuing development of the multilingual conversion methodology and the extension of the TigerTalk for SMEs prototype. Through a series of case studies, communication needs in every link in the e-commerce value chain, including contract negotiation, payment settlement, transportation logistics, custom declaration, customer services, etc., will be investigated. The goal is to provide a multilingual platform for end-to-end business transactions. The first step of need assessment in diverse industries is presented in the remainder of this report.

Case Reports on Needs Assessment


The results of eight case studies of need and feasibility assessment are summarized in the following. Enterprises from diverse industries, ranging in size from exemplary SMEs to subsidiaries of multi-nationals are included. In every case, the scope of the study is limited to exploring the application of the TigerTalk methodology to streamline communication in multilingual environments. In certain cases where proprietary information is used in this report, the identity of the enterprise involved is omitted.

Case 1. A media and entertainment company

This Pan-Asia company has core businesses in multiplex cinemas, film production and distribution, ticketing and game centers. As an example of bilingual communication needs, the main office in China submits daily, biweekly and monthly accounting reports to the Asia headquarters in Hong Kong. It also places orders for spare parts of its equipment to suppliers in the US. Such correspondence is currently conducted by telephone, fax, and to a lesser extent, e-mail. Most of the Chinese managers, while experienced in operations in the entertainment business industry, have limited command of English. To help these managers communicate with the headquarters in Hong Kong and the suppliers in the US, the company hires secretaries who majored in English to do the translation. Apart from written reports, teleconferences are set up on a daily basis among managers in China, Hong Kong, and the US, in which the English-speaking secretaries are also needed as interpreters.

The language barrier causes significance inefficiency. The translation tasks mean delays in communication. They also divert resources from other administrative work. The extra layer of interpretation adds substantially to communication cost. Errors can be introduced in the process of translation and transcription. Finally, it is more difficult to guard confidential information among managers, such as salary adjustments, hiring and firing.

A customized system based on TigerTalk can allow Chinese managers to prepare the account reports and purchase orders in Chinese, and have them sent automatically in English to Hong Kong and the US. The menu-driven design can accommodate various purposes (daily, biweekly, monthly) with mostly point-and-click selections (branch location, film titles, market share, rankings) and minimal typing (revenues). Other items such as growth rates can also be computed. Such a system can streamline the daily routines of managers immediately, resulting in substantial cost savings, and is more practical than the longer-term and less realistic ideal of upgrading the English skills of the management staff.

Case 2. A manufacturing company

This is a manufacturing company based in Taiwan with product lines in waterproof garments, furniture, sundries, PU coating and PP corrugated boards. With both domestic and overseas subsidiaries, it has suppliers and customers throughout Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America. Based on accounting analysis reports, management has set a goal of reducing communication cost and streamlining the supply, production, and sales functions through computerized information systems.

A TigerTalk approach would provide an Extranet environment for interaction among suppliers, the manufacturing plants, and customers. In this case, the external users, including long-term suppliers and regular customers apply to "join" the Extranet, and are granted permission with the assignment of a user code and password. Since the Extranet is specific to transactions with the company, TigerTalk can be customized to its exact requirements.

Under the "Inquiry" theme, a purchaser from, say, one of the plants, can select one or more suppliers, and send an inquiry specifying product name, identification code, quantity, delivery location, expiration date of inquiry, and requesting prices, payment terms, packing details, and earliest shipping date. Using the "Offer" theme, the supplier sends its response to the plant. The purchaser then selects from the bids made and places an order.

Under the "Sales" theme, customers can make inquiries, place orders and receive quotes and confirmations, similarly to the process among purchasers and suppliers described above, using the multilingual environment of TigerTalk. Customers in Europe and North America can use English, French, German, Spanish, etc., to conduct business with the company. The Spanish language capability is also expected to facilitate expansion of its market into Central and South America.

Case 3. A distributor of laboratory supplies

This US-based wholesale distributor of laboratory supplies and equipment for the educational and industrial markets offers over 900 items of experimental instruments to schools and universities, including spring scales, tuning forks, human anatomy models, and so on. With only a staff of three at the US headquarters, and a small branch office in China, it is clearly a SME. Its major customers are retailers who sell to educational end users. While 80% of its market is in the US, sales to Canada, Europe, and Africa are on the rise.

In order to offer the highest quality at the lowest price, the company focuses on simple scientific instruments without proprietary patents. It sources suitable manufacturers in China and works closely with them on trial batches to assure quality. There are also suppliers with products that are of interest to the educational market, but with design specifications different from US standards. The company sends its engineers to cooperate with the suppliers to make necessary adjustments. With the opportunity of working with diverse suppliers in China, and potentially many other parts of the world to source existing products and to develop new ones, the extension of Tiger Talk from an e-mail system to a Web-based bulletin board service (BBS) is considered by management to be particularly attractive. Since scientific instruments for schools and universities provide a clear focus, suppliers, retailers, and end-users should find such a BBS convenient and useful. However, instead of providing a generic, public service, the company can custom design the scope and format of such a bulletin board to suit its own business needs. Such restrictions are compatible with the TigerTalk methodology, which does not provide free-form translation. However, visitors can submit and view postings using menus of options in their preferred language.

Case 4. Taiwanese subsidiary of a Fortune 100 Pharmaceutical Company

The Taiwan branch has its own independent financial department to process day-to-day business expenditure. However, it needs to report annually to the parent company in the US for internal auditing.

The case study reviewed two major problems. First, the reimbursement of business expenses to its sales force takes up to two months. This is due to a bureaucratic reporting and approval system that involves district managers, sales managers, and marketing managers between the sales staff and the financial department. An expense report is hand-written and filed by a sales representative. Even if all the necessary approvals are granted in a timely manner, the process takes two weeks. Quite often, the report has to be returned for clarification, or it sits on a manager's desk awaiting approval. While 85% of accounting items are routine, the approval process causes excessive workload.

Second, the annual auditing exercise with headquarters results in a significant number of case reviews. It is estimated that more than 70% of the problems are due to the language barrier, resulting in confusion and misinterpretation of accounting terminology between Chinese and English.

An Intranet system using the Tiger Talk methodology is proposed to tackle these two problems. The expense report is standardized and put online for easy accessibility by the sales staff. Requests for approval are routed automatically via e-mail. Since items are pre-defined according to company policy, both transcription errors and fraudulent claims can be reduced. The reports are convertible between Chinese and English. All accounting terminology is predefined and agreed upon by branch and headquarter auditors. With remote access, and in English, headquarter auditors can retrieve and review expense reports on a regular basis, rather than creating bottlenecks in the workflow during the annual audit.

Case 5. Chinese subsidiary of Fortune 100 manufacturer of telecommunication equipment

This company employs over 10,000 local employees in China while the majority of managers are non-Chinese. Due to the language barrier, much communication which would normally be direct among various constituents has to be channeled through the Customer Service Department (CSD) as depicted in Figure 8.



Figure 8. Organizational structure of case company.


On a daily basis, CSD had to handle large volumes of documents going to and from departments that use English only, and dealers or customers who use Chinese only. For example, when CSD receives a letter of complaint from a customer, it has to translate it into English before forwarding to relevant departments such as Sales & Marketing, Quality Control, etc. Similarly, when Sales & Marketing wishes to collect information from the dealers, it has to ask CSD to translate the questionnaires into Chinese. Apart from such requests, CSD has its own regular (weekly, monthly, and annual) process to monitor dealer and customer feedback. The resulting reports also must be translated from Chinese to English.

As a consequence, of the staff of ten in CSD, six function almost exclusively as translators regardless of their job description as Customer Coordinators, which is to communicate with dealers and customers, to monitor and collect feedback, and to produce customer service reports. Such tasks must then be carried out by the remaining four staffers. Sample data from January 2000 illustrating the situation is tabulated below.

 

Words/Day

Translation Time (hrs)

Percentage

Customer Feedback

235,000

350

39

Prospective Orders

150,000

228

25

Technical Support

156,000

235

26

Dealer Feedback

60,000

93

10

Total

601,000

906

100

Table 1. Sample data for translation tasks.

With a Web-based system using the TigerTalk methodology, customers and dealers can work in Chinese and send e-mail in English directly to CSD. Without the burden of the translation workload, CSD can then concentrate on its mandated tasks.

Case 6. A confections importer

This is a small entrepreneurial start-up with plans to market unique and high-quality candies and confections that are sourced from all over the world via the Internet. Its market research indicates that candy consumption continues to grow, along with increasing adoption of the Internet by consumers. Analysis of the competition shows that it may occupy a unique niche by focusing on access to a world market of candy, and by presenting a steady flow of new and unique products for its customers' consideration. The need for a multilingual communication system is two-fold. In the business-to-consumers (B2C) aspect, it allows customers to place orders in their preferred language. But equally important, as it turns out, is the business-to-business (B2B) aspect. For example, two suppliers from Austria, one specializing in hand-made chocolate from Vienna, and the other selling quality preserves, have indicated a strong preference (if not insistence) on working in German for all correspondence, online or otherwise.

Case 7. A producer of honey

This Chinese company was established in 1991 and currently has 100 employees. It was a supplier of raw honey to import/export trading companies through 1996, with direct exporting thereafter. Overseas markets include Europe, Japan and the US. In the effort to develop an international market, the company experienced difficulties with language differences. An earlier plan to add an international sales department was abandoned due to budget limitations. The TigerTalk approach, and the results of the APEC Multilingual Internation Trade Project will have direct impact on this and similar SMEs in Asia.

Case 8. A quality agency

This is a German "quality agency" that acts as the intermediary between a Germany-based importer and a number of Chinese manufacturers of outdoor furniture. Apart from inspecting and ensuring compliance of quality standards for finished goods, it also handles about 80% of the communication with the Chinese companies in negotiation of prices and quantities. The "agents" are typically German graduate students sent to China during the peak production season between October and March.

Most of the manufacturers are small and not qualified to export directly, but only through a Chinese trading company. Suppose the German importer orders a 40-foot container of sunshade umbrellas in five different colors and in two different sizes. The trading company out-sources the order to one or more manufacturers. After four weeks, the products are ready to be shipped to Germany. A quality agent is assigned to oversee the communications among the agency and the importer in Germany, the trading company, the manufacturers, and their subsidiaries in China. The agent will negotiate and settle all critical specifications such as proper labeling, user instructions, and shipping marks. After inspection of the goods, a quality report must be completed before the container is loaded.

Apart from the obvious differences in languages and time zones, the way paperwork is processed currently also contributes to the communication gap. All items of necessary information are maintained in certain "lists." For the paperwork to go through, these lists must be up-to-date. However, it is not always clear who has the latest list. Therefore, a Web-based list, with suitably assigned authorization to update, would allow all parties involved to access the latest information. It can also be sent as e-mail notification in either German or Chinese within the TigerTalk framework.

Discussion



Our eight cases include both bona fide SMEs and subsidiaries of multi-national corporations. However, they share difficulties in information management and business communication due to language and word processing barriers. The TigerTalk methodology of multilingual conversion can be viewed as a flexible approach to EDI (electronic data interchange) as well as a special case of multilingual NLG (natural language generation). Its ease of use may indeed be the key to stimulate adoption of e-commerce by SMEs (Ho, 2000), who may have been intimidated by the cost and complexity of conventional EDI. A second phase of the APEC Multilingual International Project focused on the extension of TigerTalk to enable end-to-end business transactions (Ho, 2001). Specific applications include online correspondence among travelers and innkeepers in the hospitality and tourism industries (Ho, 2002a, 2002b).

From its inception, the concept of overcoming language barriers with easy-to-use, Web-based e-mail systems has been well received. When presented with the idea, most people agreed that it makes good sense, and should be useful for facilitating international e-commerce. As evidenced in our case studies, the need is obvious and commonplace in business enterprises. Yet, the promotion of its implementation and use has been difficult. This is due to several factors. First, there is the effect of network externality. Unless there is already a critical mass of users, an early adopter is not likely to find relevant applications. This is the well-known chicken-or-egg dilemma. Second, while appealing, multilingual computer-mediated communication faces much inertia of the status quo, often in the form of vested interest in the adoption, no matter how inefficient, of English as the universal language. Third, the inherent difficulties in machine translation may have led to prejudice and skepticism toward viable alternatives, such as multilingual NLG. For these reasons, it was recognized at an early stage that governmental initiatives would be pivotal in the development of the TigerTalk approach. The APEC project is a first step in that direction.

Acknowledgments

This portion of the APEC Multinational International Trade Project was supported in part by the Asia Oceania Electronic Marketplace Association (AOEMA). Case studies conducted by the Fall 2001 Asian MBA classes, and the Spring 2001 Projects in e-Commerce class at UIC contributed to the results. Valuable comments and suggestions were provided by the Editor.

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About the Author

James K. Ho is a professor of information and decision sciences in the College of Business Administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He graduated from Columbia University in 1970 and obtained his Ph.D from Stanford University in 1974. He has published widely in academic and professional journals and authored four books. The most recent, entitled Cyber Tigers: How Companies in Asia can Prosper from E-Commerce (Prentice Hall/Pearson Education Asia, 2000), has been translated into Chinese and published in September 2000 by South China Morning Post (SCMP) Book Publishing Ltd. in Hong Kong.
Address: m/c 294, 601 South Morgan, Chicago, IL 60607, USA. Telephone: (312) 996-0819 Fax: (312) 413-0385.

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