Language Grid Users: Ishida & Matsubara Laboratory at Kyoto University

Japanese and Foreign students joining "All-for-One Project"
using multilingual chat tool at research meeting

  At Ishida & Matsubara Laboratory, there are four foreign students from France, Finland, Bosnia, and Indonesia (as of January 2009). However, not all of them understand Japanese and language assistance is necessary for our research activity.
  At our research meeting, we conduct "All-for-one Project." Japanese students (=all) will contribute to the multilingualization for foreign students (=one). For example, our presentation slides are in English (the presentation is in Japanese), and we use multilingual chat tools connected to the Language Grid for exchanging opinions. This chat tool can import the slides; the foreign students can add comments in English and the Japanese students can add their comments in Japanese. Each of them can read the comments in their own native languages.
  Lately we use Language Grid Playground to translate handouts of research meeting for the foreign students. To improve the quality of translation, the students worked on creating a specialized dictionary for our laboratory. The dictionary contains up to thousand words, and we combine the dictionary with translators.
  We hope this kind of activity to support foreign students using the Language Grid will spread to other laboratories and universities.