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Appendix to item 26.3
FIG TASK FORCE ON CULTURE AND LANGUAGES - FEEDBACK FROM THE BREAKOUT SESSION
7 MAY 2001
1. What is the situation at present?
Today the only working language is English. As a result several national
delegations are missing in FIG due to the difficulty to find people speaking and
understanding correctly English.
The selection of delegates attending the meetings is primarily done on their
ability to speak English and not their knowledge and competences. Thus,
professionals who are very competent often cannot express their experience in
their own language, and even sometimes the head of delegations are chosen
because of their ability to speak English and not for their representativity. As
a consequence, FIG meetings and of course FIG commissions are more and more
attended by people from universities and less and less from people from the
professional scene, working on the field.
In scientific international associations (IAG, ISPRS, ICA, …), the English
language is a necessary standard : researchers have as a principal goal to put
in common their work, and thus the use of a unique language must be understood
as a necessity, without any major drawback. But the main goal of FIG is
completely different: it aims at allowing any surveyor, from any country, to
share his experience with others. Thus the linguistic difficulties are a basic
aspect of FIG, and cannot be escaped. Dealing with such problems correctly is
probably the highest priority to reach the objectives of the Federation, and
clearly the FIG without basic surveyors would be completely useless.
The interesting work done in FIG commission is not enough spread in each
country and to basic professionals, as the documents issued from various WGs are
not easily accessible to the basic surveyors.
If we consider the actual GATT's negotiations, the liberalization of services
is not taken in account in FIG works.
At present, in average, the age of the delegates is about 45 years and those
are coming from generations which are not trained to speak English at university
level. This generation and his elders is the one that has capitalized the
professional experience which must be shared at the FIG.
Another important point: even if we may harmonize education and practise in
our profession, it should include a very high consideration to the important
weight of culture in each country. The different cultures are of course a real
treasure, which is not used as a benefit by FIG.
2. After our meeting what are our proposals
Before giving proposals, we may consider four ways to explore:
- the general assembly
- the commissions
- the publications
- the web site
2.1 General Assembly
We have there two aspects:
- the oral expression of the delegations
- the accessibility of papers in various languages
Considering the problem of oral expression, we propose that every point of
the agenda shall be presented under slides in as many as possible of the
following languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Chinese. Doing
so, we will open the debate to nearly any delegates from any country.
The written documents which concern the General Assembly must be translated
from English in the 5 other languages.
Considering other languages our proposals are included in the workplan for
the commissions.
2.2 The Commissions
The considerable and interesting work done by the commissions is not fully
downloaded to the final users. That is to say that the colleagues working every
day in our profession fields do not take any benefit from those important
reports.
To avoid that negative aspects we propose the following:
- We will send a questionnaire to each commission to see what are the
languages spoken by the chair, the vice chair and each member of the
commission.
- Each commission will have the duty to organize a linguistic network
(mainly based on university competences) devoted to spread correctly any
information considered as important by the commission. These linguistic
networks for various commissions will probably merge in many cases, but they
must be triggered from the commissions, that are the most active part of
FIG.
- To give to each commission the ability to do so, a special budget will be
dedicated to those translations.
- All papers concerning the General Assembly to be translated in languages
other than the basic ones may be translated using the same procedures.
2.3 The publications
The publications follow the same rules than the work in commissions, with
several possible levels. The first level is that each publication will be
accompanied with abstracts translated into the basic languages.
Every presentation which could be given in foreign language by somebody who
is not speaking English will be accepted only on considerations of its technical
interest, but will directly translated at the oral presentation by a colleague
under his own responsibility. In this case the slides will be directly written
in English.
2.4 The web site
Of course, every paper and every information in general, to be added to the
web site will be given in the basic languages.
Bernard Bour and Hagen
Graeff
Co-Chairs of the Task force
11 May 2001
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