- British academics using Blackboard, whose hackles rose at US terminology such as Roster being applied to their online courses, are relieved that version 6 offers customisable labels.
- A CARET project, oki@cambridge allows shareable content objects to be played in a multi-lingual environment.
- CMI projects aim to share teaching resources across the pond.
What's involved in translating teaching tools and resources? US <-> UK English is a great example of how subtle the changes can be.
- vocabulary - professor/lecturer, math/maths
- grammar - I've got/I have
- colours and symbols - red orange green/red amber green
- formatting - 05.20.2003/20.05.2003
...and register (appropriate levels of formality), cultural assumptions (eg PC-ness), legal constraints (accessibility legislation, equal rights) and academic conventions (eg citation formats, style of argument)
Localisation (localization!) is actually a better word for this cultural translation process. However much we manage to automate translation it's always going to be expensive and demand skill. Should UK academics just get used to accepting material from elsewhere on its own terms?
