Intercultural collaboration support system using disaster safety map and machine translation

Abstract

Natural Disaster Youth Summit (NDYS) is an intercultural collaboration project promoted by a NPO called JEARN (Japan Education And Resource Network). They are working on collaborative learning about disaster prevention by exchanging disaster safety maps created by students over the world and by discussing over BBS's and video conference systems on the Internet. Language barrier is the most difficult issue in this activity, and in order to communicate freely in their own native language, linguistic support, such as using machine translation systems, is necessary. We develop CoSMOS, an intercultural collaboration support system using disaster safety map and machine translation, and discuss collaboration supports using CoSMOS from four viewpoints; handling high-definition digital images, linking disaster safety maps to the world map, supporting collaborative learning, and supporting multiple languages. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.