Decision Support Systems 12 (1994) 93-96 93 North-Holland

A Group Decision Support System for multicultural and multilingual communication J

Milam Aiken, Jeanette Martin, Ashraf Shirani and Tom Singleton Universit3 of Mississippi, University, MS 38677, USA

A Group Decision Support System (GDSS) can be used to lower or break barriers to group communication that are caused by differences in language and culture among meeting participants. This paper describes typical examples of commu- nication barriers among group members with different cul- tural and lingual backgrounds and how a GDSS can help with these problems. The paper also describes a prototype GDSS developed at the University of Mississippi that translates among English, German, and Spanish.

Keywords: Group decision support systems; Natural language translation

MUam Aiken received the B.S. degree in Engineering and the M.B.A. de- gree from the University of Okla- homa, the B.A. degree in Computer Science and the B.S. degree in Busi- ness from the State University of New York, and the Ph.D. degree in Man- agement from the University of Ari- zona. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Management Informa- tion Systems in the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Mississippi. He is the

developer of the group decision support system described in this article.

Jeanette Martin received the B.A. de- gree from Michigan State University, the M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, and the Ed.D. from Mem- phis State University. She is an Assis- tant Professor of Business Communi- cation in the Department of Manage- ment and Marketing. Her research interests include multicultural and multilingual business communication.

Correspondence to: Milam /Liken, Department of Manage- ment and Marketing, School of Business Administration, Uni- versity of Mississippi, University, MS, 38677, USA. Tel.: (601) 232-5777, E-mail: BITNET: MKAIKEN@UMSVM.

This research has been supported by the University of Mississippi's School of Business Administration Summer Research Grant Program.

1. Introduction

Group Decision Support Systems (GDSSs) have been noted for their ability to increase the productivity of group meetings [3,7,8]. These computer-based systems support a variety of group tasks including communication, idea gener- ation, issue discussion, negotiation, conflict reso- lution, systems analysis and design, and document preparation. In addition, these systems typically allow meeting participants to exchange comments anonymously and simultaneously, resulting in de- creased meeting times, increased group decision quality, and increased participant satisfaction with the meeting process.

It is clear that GDSSs provide benefits to specific groups performing certain tasks, and GDSSs are continually being developed and mod- ified in order to address a wider variety of tasks performed by groups with different characteris- tics. For example, several research projects are

Ashraf Shirani received the B.S. de- gree in Urban Planning from the Uni- versity of Engineering and Technol- ogy in Lahore, Pakistan, the M.P.S. degree in Regional Planning from Cornell University, and the M.B.A. degree from the University of Arkansas. He is currently a Ph.D. stu- dent with a major in Management Information Systems in the Depart- ment of Management and Marketing. His research interests include Group Decision Support Systems and Expert Systems. Tom Singleton received the B.S. de- gree in Accounting and the M.B.A. degree from the University of North Alabama. He is currently a Ph.D. stu- dent in the School of Accountancy at the University of Mississippi. He is the associate editor of The Account- ing Historians Journal, and his re- search interests include EDP audit- ing, ethics in computer environments, and Group Decision Support Sys- tems.

0167-9236/94/$07.00 © 1994 - Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved SSD1 01 67 -9236(93 )E0002-U

94 M. Aiken et al. / A GDSS for communication

under way to allow groups distributed geographi- cally and temporally to meet electronically. How- ever, no GDSS has addressed the problems of supporting multilingual and multicultural groups. (For the purposes of this paper, a multilingual or multicultural group is defined as a group of hu- mans who do not share a common language or culture. An example is a group of five Germans, four Americans, and three Spaniards, each of whom know only their native language and cul- ture.) This problem is of increasing importance because of global competitiveness and the need to communicate with a wider variety of people across national boundaries [5].

This paper discusses barriers to multilingual and multicultural groups and describes how a GDSS can be used to overcome some of these barriers. In addition, the paper presents a proto- type GDSS developed at the University of Missis- sippi that supports multilingual/multicultural groups through an electronic brainstorming pro- gram, an idea consolidation program, a ranking program, and perhaps most importantly, auto- mated language translation programs.

2. Cultural and lingual barriers to communica- tion

Culture is a system of beliefs and values shared by a particular group of people, and behavior is the principal manifestation and most significant consequence of culture [12]. In particular, behav- ior in the form of verbal and nonverbal communi- cation patterns is important in intercultural com- munication [9].

Groups exhibit many verbal and nonverbal communication patterns, and each varies with the group's culture. Various forms of nonverbal com- munication include written expression, chrone- mics, proxemics, kinesics, oculesics, olfactics, haptics, paralanguage, metacommunication, and gender [5,6,10,11]. A GDSS helps reduce prob- lems of intercultural communication primarily by masking or eliminating many verbal and nonver- bal behaviors that might offend members of other cultures. Because the vast majority of communi- cation using a GDSS is written and no one partic- ipant is talking directly to another participant, body language cannot be misinterpreted. When touching, eye contact, and other forms of commu-

nication are needed, however, this communica- tion can occur before, after, or during breaks in the GDSS session. Thus, a GDSS can be used to supplement verbal and non-verbal communica- tion rather than replace it.

In addition to cultural barriers to communica- tion, groups may have lingual barriers to commu- nication. Groups of people who share little or no common language have great difficulty communi- cating. Multilingual groups historically have re- lied on human interpreters who are expensive, may be unavailable, can translate for only one group participant at a time, and sometimes make errors (especially when translating verbal commu- nication). Yet, the increasing number of interna- tional meetings involving multiple languages will necessitate a growing reliance on translation and interpretation. For example, the unification of the European Common Market economies and the increase in trade with Eastern European countries have already expanded the number of multilingual meetings.

Two recent developments in microcomputer technology may greatly increase the productivity of multilingual groups. The first development, Group Decision Support Systems (GDSSs) using microcomputers in local area networks, occurred in the mid-1980s. The second development, mi- crocomputer software for automatic language translation, is a relatively new phenomenon. Sev- eral microcomputer applications have been devel- oped for transliteration (translating individual words only) and a few other applications have been developed to translate sentences, para- graphs, and stories. These two developments combined (a GDSS which provides automatic translations of all comments generated) may yield an order of magnitude increase in productivity in multilingual groups [2].

Because automatic translation programs in the near future will continue to lack 100 percent accuracy, the integration of these programs with GDSSs may be the most promising area of imple- mentation. For example, in GDSS sessions, par- ticipants may not require punctiliously correct grammar or exact word translations as long as the gist of a comment is ascertainable. That is, a translation can be "fuzzy" and still be used [4]. Also, a multilingual GDSS which provides simul- taneous translation of multiple comments, paral- lel communication, anonymity, and automated

M. Aiken et al. / A GDSS for communication 95

record keeping is likely to yield the same benefits to multilingual groups as traditional GDSSs have provided to monolingual groups [8].

Gray and Olfman [4] have proposed a similar multilingual GDSS with the exception that bilin- gual or multilingual facilitators would take an active role in the translation by either manually translating each comment or editing the output from automatic translators. They state that "de- lays from human intervention in creating or checking the translation should be acceptable since only a few lines are being added at a time". However, they go on to state that " the facilitator [translator] would have to be discreet in maintain- ing anonymity during the process" and "several facilitators may be required for large groups to keep pace with the rate of information genera- tion". The multilingual GDSS described in sec- tion three eliminates the concern about circum- venting anonymity because there is no human intervention in translation. Also, each participant has a dedicated automatic translator and so a single translator is not overburdened by com- ments from multiple group members.

3. The multilingual GDSS prototype

The multilingual GDSS allows Spanish, Ger- man, and English speakers to exchange com- ments among themselves while translations of their comments are provided to the speakers of other languages in the group. The multilingual group can also aggregate the comments into topic categories and rank the importance of choices in a list. The prototype consists of three software tools:

1. Brainstorm: The Brainstorm program allows meeting participants to electronically exchange messages anonymously and simultaneously while all comments are translated to the different lan- guages and recorded on disk. For example, twenty meeting participants may discuss the European Common Market in English, German, and Span- ish. Figure 1 shows how an English speaker adds a comment to the discussion; Figure 2 shows how a Spanish speaker gets help on the system. Span- ish speakers use the Spanish edition of the soft- ware, German speakers use the German edition, and English speakers used the English edition.

i. What do you think of the European comJmon market?

2. I believe we should have one currency.

3. Maybe we should have another name for this con~on market?

4. Trade barriers should be lowered immediately!

5. English is the language of business. Therefore, everyone learn English.

6. Germany should take a leading role in the new European

7. England will also want a leading role.

8. What about France? It should not be neglected.

I think that an international conference should be held ~]] to discuss this problem.

J 14:24:55 Fl0-Save comment ~ - - ~

Fig. 1. English speaker 's GDSS screen.

Each edition has instructions and a help facility already translated to the appropriate language and the applicable character set is mapped to the keyboard. For example, German speakers will need umlauts and Spanish speakers will need tildes.

In addition to automatically translating the comments, the system records the comments as "minutes of the meeting" for later distribution among the group members. All participants may write comments simultaneously and anonymously, thus allowing them to state their true opinions without the possibility of recrimination from oth- ers in the group. For example, the comment about Germany taking a leading role might anger group members from England and Spain.

2. Idea Consolidator: The output from the brainstorming phase is more readable and cogent if all ideas relating to a certain topic are grouped

i. £Qu~ piensa del Europeo mercado comun?

2. Creo que tenemos que tener circulacion.

3. 6Tiene que quiz~s nosotros tenet otto hombre para este mercado comdn?

4. ~Barreras de comercio tienen que bajar inmediatamente!

5. Ingl~s es la lengua de negecios. Pot Io tanto, cada uno tiene que aprender Ingles.

6. Alemania tiene que llevar un papel conduciendo en la nueva comunidad Europea.

7. Inglaterra tambi~n querr~ un papel conduciendo.

8. 6Que de Francia? Tiene que no desculdar.

;Bienvenido a Brainstorm!

Debe apretar las teclas del segui:=:

F5 Lea comento. PgUp Suba una pantalla. PgDn Baje una pantalla.

? Suba uno rengldn. I Baje uno rengl~n.

ESC - Salida

Fig. 2. Spanish speaker 's GDSS screen.

14:24:55-~

96 M. Aiken et al. / A GDSS for communication

together. For example, all comments dealing with a European Common Market currency could be put in the "Currency" category. Most GDSSs have no facility for consolidating these ideas, while other GDSSs force the groups to manually categorize the comments. The multilingual GDSS relies on an automatic categorization program called Idea Consolidator, however; this reduces the time spent on organizing ideas by up to 99 percent [1]. Groups may accept the automatic categorization or they may manually adjust the comment groupings.

3. Rank: The final tool in the prototype allows group participants to individually rank alterna- tives (already translated) based upon some crite- ria. These alternatives may be defined prior to the meeting and can consequently have more accurate translations.

tural groups. The GDSS supports these groups through the provision of anonymity, automated record keeping, parallel communication among group participants, and finally, translation of comments from one language to another. Re- stricting communication to written comments eliminates or reduces miscommunication result- ing from verbal and nonverbal barriers. The de- velopment of a GDSS for supporting multilingual groups represents another step in the direction of developing an "intelligent" GDSS [2].

References

The multilingual GDSS is implemented on a Novell network of twenty 80386 IBM-compatible microcomputers. The dictionaries contain approx- imately 35,000 words each at present and are continually increasing. The time necessary to translate a comment of three lines and 29 words from English to Spanish, for example, is approxi- mately 6 seconds. Although the accuracy of the translations is considered to be very good, occa- sional errors will occur because of misspellings or poor grammar in the source comment and the use of slang, euphemisms, and idioms which are difficult to translate. The translation programs interpret words and phrases, conjugate verbs, provide gender and number agreement, and take into consideration word order. Words which can- not be translated are enclosed in brackets in the translation. Future versions of the system will scan the source comment before translation and will notify the originator of any misspellings or unknown words, allowing the originator a chance to correct mistakes or reword the text.

4. Conclusion

This paper describes a group decision support system that supports multilingual and multicul-

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