Communication tools such as email facilitate communication and collaboration between speakers of different languages, who use two primary strategies—English as a common language and machine translation (MT) tools—to help them overcome language barriers. However, each of these communication strategies creates its own challenges for cross-lingual communication. In this paper, we compare how people’s interpretations of an email sender’s social intention, and their evaluation of the email and the senders, differ when using a common language versus MT in email communication. We conducted an online experiment in which monolingual native English speakers read and rated request emails written by native English speakers, emails written by bilingual Chinese speakers in English, and emails written in Chinese then machine-translated into English. We found that participants interpreted the social intentions of the email sender less accurately for machine-translated emails than for emails written by non-native speakers in English. Participants also rated the senders and emails less positively overall for machine-translated emails compared to emails written by non-native speakers in English. Based on these findings, we suggest design possibilities that could better aid multilingual communication.
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Facilitating Global Team Meetings Between Language-Based Subgroups: When and How Can Machine Translation Help?
Global teams frequently consist of language-based subgroups who put together complementary information to achieve common goals. Previous research outlines a two-step work communication flow in these teams. There are team meetings using a required common language (i.e., English); in preparation for those meetings, people have subgroup conversations in their native languages. Work communication at team meetings is often less effective than in subgroup conversations. In the current study, we investigate the idea of leveraging machine translation (MT) to facilitate global team meetings. We hypothesize that exchanging subgroup conversation logs before a team meeting offers contextual information that benefits teamwork at the meeting. MT can translate these logs, which enables comprehension at a low cost. To test our hypothesis, we conducted a between-subjects experiment where twenty quartets of participants performed a personnel selection task. Each quartet included two English native speakers (NS) and two non-native speakers (NNS) whose native language was Mandarin. All participants began the task with subgroup conversations in their native languages, then proceeded to team meetings in English. We manipulated the exchange of subgroup conversation logs prior to team meetings: with MT-mediated exchanges versus without. Analysis of participants' subjective experience, task performance, and depth of discussions as reflected through their conversational moves jointly indicates that team meeting quality improved when there were MT-mediated exchanges of subgroup conversation logs as opposed to no exchanges. We conclude with reflections on when and how MT could be applied to enhance global teamwork across a language barrier.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1947929
- PAR ID:
- 10341364
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
- Volume:
- 6
- Issue:
- CSCW1
- ISSN:
- 2573-0142
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 26
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Purpose: We examined which measures of complexity are most informative when studying language produced in interaction. Specifically, using these measures, we explored whether native and nonnative speakers modified the higher level properties of their production beyond the acoustic–phonetic level based on the language background of their conversation partner.
Method: Using a subset of production data from the Wildcat Corpus that used Diapix, an interactive picture matching task, to elicit production, we compared English language production at the dyad and individual level across three different pair types: eight native pairs (English–English), eight mixed pairs (four English–Chinese and four English–Korean), and eight nonnative pairs (four Chinese–Chinese and four Korean–Korean).
Results: At both the dyad and individual levels, native speakers produced longer and more clausally dense speech. They also produced fewer silent pauses and fewer linguistic mazes relative to nonnative speakers. Speakers did not modify their production based on the language background of their interlocutor.
Conclusions: The current study examines higher level properties of language production in true interaction. Our results suggest that speakers' productions were determined by their own language background and were independent of that of their interlocutor. Furthermore, these demonstrated promise for capturing syntactic characteristics of language produced in true dialogue.
Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24712956 -
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Event concepts of common verbs (e.g. eat, sleep) can be broadly shared across languages, but a given language’s rules for subcategorization are largely arbitrary and vary substantially across languages. When subcategorization information does not match between first language (L1) and second language (L2), how does this mismatch impact L2 speakers in real time? We hypothesized that subcategorization knowledge in L1 is particularly difficult for L2 speakers to override online. Event-related potential (ERP) responses were recorded from English sentences that include verbs that were ambitransitive in Mandarin but intransitive in English (* My sister listened the music). While L1 English speakers showed a prominent P600 effect to subcategorization violations, L2 English speakers whose L1 was Mandarin showed some sensitivity in offline responses but not in ERPs. This suggests that computing verb–argument relations, although seemingly one of the basic components of sentence comprehension, in fact requires accessing lexical syntax which may be vulnerable to L1 interference in L2. However, our exploratory analysis showed that more native-like behavioral accuracy was associated with a more native-like P600 effect, suggesting that, with enough experience, L2 speakers can ultimately overcome this interference.
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Expectation is a powerful mechanism in native-language processing. Less is known about its role in non-native language processing, especially for expectations at the discourse level. This study presents evidence from a story-continuation task, adapted from previous work with native speakers (Rohde et al., 2006), probing next-mention and coherence expectations among Japanese- and Korean-speaking learners of English. As in previous work, verbal aspect (perfective/imperfective) in a context sentence describing a transfer-of-possession event (e.g., Ron gave/was giving a towel to Patrick) modulated participants’ choices of next referents in their continuations. However, this effect was diminished in the non-native compared to the native-speaker group, despite comparable performance on an independent task assessing knowledge of verbal aspect in English, and previous evidence for significant effects of aspect on referential patterns in native Japanese and Korean processing (Ueno & Kehler, 2010; Kim et al., 2013). The two groups of speakers were equally sensitive to a cue that does not require predictive processing – the referential form of the story-continuation prompt – in that both groups were significantly more likely to establish reference to the discourse topic/Source of the transfer event for pronoun-initial continuations than for name-initial ones. Moreover, recency played a stronger role in non-native speakers’ referential choices than in those of native speakers. These results suggest that while native speakers engage in proactive discourse processing, non-native speakers are less able to do so, being sufficiently burdened by reactive processes required for information integration that they have only Reduced Ability to Generate Expectations (RAGE).more » « less
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Objective We explore the relationships between objective communication patterns displayed during virtual team meetings and established, qualitative measures of team member effectiveness.
Background A key component of teamwork is communication. Automated measures of objective communication patterns are becoming more feasible and offer the ability to measure and monitor communication in a scalable, consistent and continuous manner. However, their validity in reflecting meaningful measures of teamwork processes are not well established, especially in real-world settings.
Method We studied real-world virtual student teams working on semester-long projects. We captured virtual team meetings using the Zoom video conferencing platform throughout the semester and periodic surveys comprising peer ratings of team member effectiveness. Leveraging audio transcripts, we examined relationships between objective measures of speaking time, silence gap duration and vocal turn-taking and peer ratings of team member effectiveness.
Results Speaking time, speaking turn count, degree centrality and (marginally) speaking turn duration, but not silence gap duration, were positively related to individual-level team member effectiveness. Time in dyadic interactions and interaction count, but not interaction length, were positively related to dyad-level team member effectiveness.
Conclusion Our study highlights the relevance of objective measures of speaking time and vocal turn-taking to team member effectiveness in virtual project-based teams, supporting the validity of these objective measures and their use in future research.
Application Our approach offers a scalable, easy-to-use method for measuring communication patterns and team member effectiveness in virtual teams and opens the opportunity to study these patterns in a more continuous and dynamic manner.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3512937
