(A10) Languages

[John Simkin]

Phase 1 will mainly involve producing an overview of how the subject is taught in different countries and a database of case-studies. These will be published in English and the language of the author. The project team will also create an online forum and website to ensure dissemination of our work.

Pedro Reis has raised the issue of languages in the "Other Costs" thread. This is a very important issue and deserves its own thread (I will start one later today).

As explained above, the plan is to create the material in English with certain material in the language of the author. Therefore, given the membership of the project, some of the material will be in Spanish, French, Italian, Swedish, Portuguese and Hungarian. We also plan to use the E-HELP idea of associate membership. This will enable us to obtain accounts of citizenship being taught in other European countries. In this way we can insure that part of the citizenship project is in German, Dutch, etc.

It will of course be incredibly expensive to get the whole of the website translated into all the main European languages. One alternative is to pay members of the project (days contributed) to translate the material from English.

The availability of material in different languages will help our application. Therefore, I think what we decide about this issue should be added to the this section of the application form.

[Juan Carlos]

Writing articles in English for the project in English would be a time-consuming work that will lead, at least in my case, to poor quality results.

I know that translators are quite expensive, but, for example, we can spend a great part of the money we paid out for the website in E-Help in translating articles into English.

This way we will have a common material in English complemented with articles in our different languages.

In the case of the Spanish material, we could do as we did in E-HELP. Vicente translated into English the articles I wrote on History of Spanish Women.

[Juan Carlos]

Everybody who manages to communicate in a language different from his mother tongue knows how difficult and time-consuming is to write long texts in a foreign tongue. As a consequence, I think it is necessary to budget money for translations into English.

After having a quite glance at translators pages on internet, it seems to me that texts with less than 1000 words are a bit cheaper. This reinforces my idea of not translating the whole texts, but an extended summary of our material.

Translating 1000 words would cost about 70-100 euros in Spain. Maybe less if we contract Argentinian or other Latin-American translators. I have just seen an article that claims that in Britain 1000 word text costs about 50 pounds.

With this problem solved, we can set up an excellent web site with a common core in English and more extended texts in our own national languages. A fact that Comenius Agency in Brussels will appreciate.

[Pedro Reis]

I agree with Juan Carlos.

I think that we could translate an extended summary of our texts into English. In Portugal, translating a text with 1000 words would cost about 60 Euros.

[Caterina Gasparini]

I agree with Juan Carlos.

I think that we could translate an extended summary of our texts into English. In Portugal, translating a text with 1000 words would cost about 60 Euros.

I agree with Juan Carlos and Pedro: in the project I coordinated last year (a Comenius 1.2 with Norway) we started with the goal of publishing all the material in 3 languages, Norwegian, Italian and English. This proved to be a little complicated, so we tried to keep most of it in two languages at least, English (of course) and one of the two languages of the exchange. The result was satisfactory because it also gave the idea of something in progress and to be continued in the future (which is what is actually happening): there is always the posibility of translating more material, provided there is time and interest in doing so.

As for the project on citizenship, this could also mean that more languages will be involved (which can be one of the aspects of the project itself) and the result will be open to more contributions.

However, when writing a project application, some results in terms of products and processes must be foreseen and clearly set. This does not mean that the implementation of the project may not lead to unexpected or unforeseen results.

[John Simkin]

It seems to me that it would benefit the bid to make most of our research available in several different languages. I propose that the country overviews and the case-studies should be made available in the following languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish and Hungarian.

This will cost a considerable amount of money. However, I believe it can be done by cutting other areas of the budget. For example, the number of meetings we hold and the number of outside experts we employ.

However, all this will be academic unless we find another teacher training institution. I have still to hear from Pedro’s contact.

[Guest]

However, all this will be academic unless we find another teacher training institution. I have still to hear from Pedro’s contact.

Would you consider a training agency running SCITT and GTP teacher training courses appropriate?? If so I may be able to give you a possible contact after half term