Comments on: Multilingual provision is cheaper than English-Only

By: Internationalization and Englishization in Higher Education | Language on the Move

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:11:25 +0000

[…] to the Englishization of global academia. Here on Language on the Move we have recently discussed the transfer of the burden of language learning from society to the individual; increased social stratification as those who can afford private tuition in English will enjoy […]

By: Li Jia

Li Jia — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 04:30:53 +0000

What a thoughtful remark by Gazzola and Grin: the concept of “English as a lingua franca” (ELF) turns out to be “English Only” in terms of the socioeconomic implications! ELF as a new label also frequently appears in Asia (as indicated by the book “English as a Lingua Franca in ASEAN—A Multilingual Model”) especially after English became the “the sole working language” in ASEAN in 2009. However, I really wonder how many percentages of ASEAN citizens can have the full access to the content of documents and democratic participation of ASEAN affairs when fewer number of people’s first language is English compared to the number of EU? What’s more, the labour market rewards with the “native speaker norm” will only bring ELF varieties in ASEAN into a fantasy. Additionally, If I could have access to the figures of English language cost in ASEAN, I believe language budgets cost from “the extended circles” like Laos, Vietnam would be much more than those of “Outer Circles” like Philippine, Singapore. If so, how can citizens in ASEAN have fair play in dealing with their common concerns? How can ASEAN realize their dream of building up “an ASEAN identity”(http://www.asean.org/communities/asean-socio-cultural-community/category/asean-ministers-responsible-for-culture-arts-amca)?

By: Christof Demont-Heinrich

Christof Demont-Heinrich — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:32:58 +0000

Excellent points! I would add, translation, and the labor of translation, never really go away. It's not a matter of translation suddenly magically disappearing, translation is always present. It's a matter of where the translation work is being done and who is doing the translation work -- whether it's an individual with Japanese as a mother tongue who's become highly proficient in English and is, in her/his head, constantly translating, doing the work of translation, and who has had to invest a lot of time/money into getting to the point of being able to do internal translation, or an external translator, who is performing the labor/work of translation for someone else.

By: Rosemary Kuwahata

Rosemary Kuwahata — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 09:56:40 +0000

What is this ‘ But the overall cost could still be brought down from one cup of coffee to say half a cup of coffee’ about?
Translation and interpreting services are worth more than that!
Having Japanese ability I have so far only used Rakuten in Japanese. The domestic site obviously operates in Japanese only, and it would only be the operators of site set up for overseas customers that are forcefully expected to be operating in English. In their dreams!

By: Penelope Vos

Penelope Vos — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:02:45 +0000

Using Esperanto instead of English would be both fairer and cheaper, since the language is very much more consistent and modular than English.

It would probably be cheaper than a multilingual approach in some or most settings and, imposing less on the people involved, allows more time for maintenance of linguistic diversity outside of those settings.

Thanks for an interesting story.