As part of the Association for Business Communication Student Case Competition, this article features a case study written by ABC member Rachel Dolechek. The case was blind reviewed and selected by the ABC Student Competition Committee. ABC membership utilized the case in their classrooms throughout 2024 and submitted top student examples for the 2024 Case Writing Competition. A submission from Addie Hileman, sponsored by Kelley O’Brien, was selected as the top student case writer after evaluation by the ABC Student Competition Committee and a marketing business professional. The student’s message serves as a teaching example within this article.
María del Mar Sánchez Ramos, Jesús Torres del Rey, Lucía Morado Vázquez
Since localisation emerged in the 1980s as an activity linked to the software industry, its evolution has gone hand in hand with technological advances. In the globalised market of the 21st century, an ever-increasing range of digital products must be localised. While academic institutions are aware of how the increasing demand for localisation is affecting the translation industry, there is no consensus regarding what and how courses and modules on localisation should be taught. This article reports the findings of a survey-based study that adopted a descriptive-interpretive methodology to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from a group of 16 localisation trainers teaching on undergraduate translation programmes at Spanish universities. To contextualise and help with the focus of the survey, a literature review on localiser education was carried out. The results of both the survey and the literature review reinforce the findings of an earlier unpublished study by the same authors that localisation training is keeping pace with technological evolution, despite its scarce presence in translation studies curricula. In addition, respondents noted that one of their main challenges is finding authentic teaching materials and recommended closer collaboration between academia and the localisation
Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
Cet article s’intéresse à une campagne de communication hybride qui fait la promotion du « volet parité » la politique « diversité » de l’entreprise Accenture intitulée Equals. Son objectif, à la fois institutionnel et promotionnel, est d’attirer les talents en montrant l’entreprise énonciatrice comme un espace de travail où il fait bon travailler. Diffusés dans l’espace public comme en interne de l’organisation, les affiches et leurs messages sont les objets analysés ici. Notre analyse critique du discours de campagne montre la manière dont il reproduit une bicatégorisation genrée normative en soulignant que l’engagement égalitariste déclaré est conditionné à une égalité préalable. Il souligne que les efforts consentis par l’entreprise en vue d’un traitement plus égalitaire sont arrimés à la démonstration des compétences et des performances professionnelles des femmes. Cette posture discursive renvoie implicitement au fait que celles-ci sont elles-mêmes responsables des phénomènes inégalitaires qu’elles subissent dans le monde du travail. Les inégalités sources de discriminations ne sont ici ni montrées ni prises en compte. Ce discours de campagne qui présente l’implication de l’entreprise pour davantage d’égalité constitue dès lors, paradoxalement, un discours à caractère euphémique et aux effets dépolitisants.
Communication. Mass media, Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
Language-sensitive recruitment is a language management tool frequently used by corporate organizations. However, its relationship with corporate policy is lacking; hence, this study aims to consider language-sensitive job advertisements from a computational text analysis perspective and explore the match (or mismatch) between language-sensitive recruitment (English, Japanese, or bilingual) and corporate language policy. This study uses corpus methods combined with topic modeling and text analysis to investigate the influence of corporate language policy on the textual practice of language-sensitive recruitment in a Japanese multinational corporation (MNC). This study finds a considerable discrepancy between recruitment needs and corporate language policy. It also finds that bilinguals still play a key role in crossing language boundaries 10 years post-mandate of the English language policy in this Japanese MNC. The study contributes to business language by exploring an additional scenario for linking language competency with actual recruitment needs. Thus, this study sheds light on the implementation of language-sensitive recruitment in a multilingual corporate context, affecting the communication patterns and recruitment tactics.
Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
The mission of Spanish universities is to serve society by promoting the improvement of quality of life, culture and economic development. This objective is achieved through teaching, research, transfer and dissemination of knowledge. It is essential to ensure that the actions and strategies implemented by Spanish universities are guided by these objectives, which is why a quality control policy is essential. Within this policy, the comparison with foreign universities may be interesting, and institutions controlling for universities' quality are tempted to use international university rankings prepared by companies as a substitute for a more in-depth and adequate analysis. In this work it is verified that the most cited international rankings do not evaluate the quality, but the prestige of the universities based on mainly bibliometric criteria and surveys. In this way, a very partial view of the universities is obtained that does not consider the different functions that they have been entrusted with, at least in the case of Spain. Finally, some of the risks involved in using these rankings as guides in the definition of Spanish university policy are noted.
Finance, Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
Having noted the entrepreneurial reluctance of graduates in general and T&I graduates in particular in Spain, we propose social entrepreneurship in the field of international protection and refugees as a potentially viable employment opportunity. The ever-growing number of asylum seekers arriving in Spain have a recognised right to access translation and interpreting services, and we therefore advocate the training of interpreters to operate in asylum scenarios and meet the specific deontological requirements involved therein. Future professionals need to be equipped with all the tools necessary to be able to handle the different challenges that may arise in such situations. To this end, we present the results of a series of interviews conducted with refugee reception organisations in the province of Seville, the capital of Andalusia which is one of the regions in the EU which handles the highest number of immigrant arrivals. The situations experienced in these organizations may reflect the state of the question in the asylum field. We found that the application of professional ethics in real-case situations is indeed very often deficient, and its inclusion in training syllabuses in the country could help address this social need.
Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
Jorge Armando Puentes, Carlos Alberto Arango, Juan Pablo Orejuela
In Colombia, the small rice plantations must be associated with nearby ones to decrease the fixed costs of harvesting. These associations contract with third parties the mowing, threshing and cleaning combined machines of the grain. In the search for efficiency, the process of scheduling the dates in which each crop will be served by the combined machines must be managed in a centralized manner, taking into account the different machines efficiencies, the conditions of the land and the cost overruns for violating the windows time associated with the harvest time of the crops. In this sense, this article develops a solution to address the described problem, based on a whole linear programming model which minimizes the overall harvest costs and the costs of harvesting the crops in premature or anticipated moments. The model was validated in one of the associations, which showed results that minimize the total cost of machinery allocation by 7.04%.
Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
Flor Ángela Marulanda Valencia, Daimer Higuita López, José Márquez
This document addresses the organizational strategy undertaken by the Fabricato company since 2014. Specifically, the text analyzes the material-ization of the strategy through the so-called Mass Customization. To do so, in addition to the literature review, the case study research had primary sources such as interviews, conferences, reports from the company’s presidency, and secondary sources such as books, press articles and magazines. Consequently, the paper presents practices and decisions necessary for the realization of the strategy, such as the acquisition of the new technology and the role of the people or collaborators. This strategy, used by world-class companies, will involve Fabricato into a greater relationship with end customers, an update in its production lines and an education campaign for future consumers. This will allow an advantage over the large volume market suppliers, by providing greater added value and therefore the possibility of having better prices
Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
In Spain, the functions assigned to the University are varied and have changed over time. Currently, it is considered that university activity should be focused on improving the well-being of the society in which the university is located. Thus, any quality control of the Spanish university system must consider whether the university is fulfilling the purposes that society has assigned to it. In Spain, the task of quality control of universities is mainly assigned to the National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA). In principle, through different programs, this agency evaluates different aspects of the Universities. However, as can be seen in this research, the control activity is limited to university degrees and the activity of the teaching staff. Moreover, this control hardly measures to what extent the University system is achieving its goals.
Finance, Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
The Monitor Model fosters a view of translating where two mind modes stand out and alternate when trying to render originals word-by-word by default: shallow, uneventful processing vs problem solving. Research may have been biased towards problem solving, often operationalized with a pause of, or above, 3 seconds. This project analyzed 16 translation log files by four informants from four originals. A baseline minimal pause of 200 ms was instrumental to calculate two individual thresholds for each log file: (a) A low one – 1.5 times the median pause within words – and (b) a high one – 3 times the median pause between words. Pauses were then characterized as short (between 200 ms and the lower threshold), mid, and long (above the higher threshold, chunking the recorded activities in the translation task into task segments), and assumed to respond to different causes. Weak correlations between short, mid and long pauses were found, hinting at possible different cognitive processes. Inferred processes did not fall neatly into categories depending on the length of possibly associated pauses. Mid pauses occurred more often than long pauses between sentences and paragraphs, and they also more often flanked information searches and even problem-solving instances. Chains of proximal mid pauses marked cases of potential hesitations. Task segments tended to happen within 4–8 minute cycles, nested in a possible initial phase for contextualization, followed by long periods of sustained attention. We found no evidence for problem-solving thresholds, and no trace of behavior supporting the Monitor Model.
Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
The problem that brings us together revolves around several aspects related to corporate social responsibility (CSR). This issue-problem arises as a result of the economic, environmental and social crises generated by the capitalist accumulation model. Nonetheless, the discourse of sustainable development, green neoliberalism and CSR seem to have channeled social discontent, although it is far from environmentally and socially sustainable business models. The work has as objectives to make an approximation to a self-constituted sense of RS and to characterize the elements that can be central to this sense, starting from the case of the Integration Committee of the Colombian Massif. For this, the concepts of globalization (Boaventura de Sousa), internal and external senses of the SR according to Ariza (2011) are used, and social responsibility (Suárez, 2014), social actor approaches (Touraine, 2000) and social economy (Coraggio, 2011). In the methodological aspect, a qualitative, historical approach and a design based on the review of documents and interviews with the leaders of the organization under study were used. It is concluded that the CIMA and its actions allow recovering the self-constitutive and autonomous sense of social responsibility, which translates into the confi guration of the peasants into collective actors capable of autonomous action, of generating solidarity provisions (internal and inter-organizational), to produce while taking care of nature and to transform the environment
Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
This paper examines some aspects of the prosody of reading aloud. The pitch contour of a read text was examined, and the low troughs, or valleys, in the contour were identified. The pitch of these troughs, and their position in the text, was found to relate systematically to the structure of the text. This suggests that the speaker’s pitch baseline may carry important linguistic information.
Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
A dictionary is an information tool. In the last century most dictionaries were constructed as polyfunctional tools following a broad and imprecise understanding: A dictionary is to be used by everyone for every kind of communicative and cognitive problem. But normal tools are not polyfunctional. If you go to a shop and ask for a saw, you have to specify first what you are going to saw: a big tree or a small piece of plywood. After having explained that, you will be offered a monofunctional saw. So it should be, too, for the information tool: A good tool is a tool designed for a certain function and for a certain user group for certain needs. This paper will argue for the need of dictionary designs for monofunctional dictionaries. Doing that, we need to be aware of the fact that a lexicographical database is not a dictionary. A database contains data which can be presented in one or more monofunctional or polyfunctional dictionaries.
The database of the dictionary in question comprises 4.015 (September 30st, 2012) cards with definitions, historical background, synonyms, references and links, pictures etc. Outgoing from this database, four different dictionaries are presented. All of them are dictionaries on musical terms mainly from the world of classical music, but also from commercial music and the so-called world music. The music dictionaries intend to be tools for music students in universities and music schools, for both amateurs and professional musicians and for every interested person who wants aid when reading texts on music or who wishes to get further information on musical terms and topics.
Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence
In a parallel language environment it is important that teaching takes account of both the languages students are expected to work in. Lectures in the mother tongue need to offer access to textbooks in English and encouragement to read. This paper describes a preliminary study for an investigation of the extent to which they actually do so. A corpus of lectures in English for mainly L1 English students (from BASE and MICASE) was examined for the types of reference to reading which occur, classified by their potential usefulness for access and encouragement. Such references were called ‘intertextual episodes’. Seven preliminary categories of intertextual episode were identified. In some disciplines the text is the topic of the lecture rather than a medium for information on the topic, and this category was not pursued further. In the remaining six the text was a medium for information about the topic. Three of them involved management, of texts by the lecturer her/himself, of student writing, or of student reading. The remaining three involved reference to the content of the text either introducing it to students, reporting its content, or, really the most interesting category, relativizing it and thus potentially encouraging critical reading. Straightforward reporting that certain content was in the text at a certain point was the most common type, followed by management of student reading. Relativization was relatively infrequent. The exercise has provided us with categories which can be used for an experimental phase where the effect of different types of reference can be tested, and for observation of the references actually used in L1 lectures in a parallel-language environment.
Business communication. Including business report writing, business correspondence