These languages can mean the difference between life and death. Effectively bridging communication gaps, they can help detect crime, avert crashes and save lives. Speed and safety are the results achieved by them.
Edward Johnson, Senior Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, U.K., is a pioneer in the field of operational and communication languages. "They are the special languages of command and control where the utterances you make affect something far away - communication between ships, air traffic control and police operations," he says in an interview with this correspondent at the college premises. "These languages are difficult to learn and master. You need a special grammar for the conversation."
Johnson has been responsible for formulating an international language for maritime communication, SeaSpeak, in 1982, an air traffic pilot training communication programme, AirSpeak, in 1986 and a restricted operational language and set of procedures for police communication, PoliceSpeak in 1987.
Countless errors have resulted from sloppy communication practices and poorly worded messages, believes Johnson, and many lives have been lost. Had the Light Brigade in Balaclava in 1854 (immortalised in Tennyson's poem) received a sure command, would so many lives have been sacrificed? But "someone had blundered." The Tenerife air crash in 1997 may not have occurred had the traffic control messages been clear. An entire diving crew would not have perished in the North Sea in 1983 if the message had been interpreted properly... The examples are many.
Generally, communication lapses are put down to "human error" or "mechanical failure", points out Dr. Johnson. The assistance of systems analysts is sought while it is actually the linguist who can help.
"I firmly believe that language did not evolve from an instrumental code. It would have had its origins in reassurance-huntsmen communicating with one another and mothers nursing babies. Language is replete with ambiguities and that is its charm."
These ambiguities can, however, pose a problem when it comes to communication in times of emergencies and operations as when mariners, airmen, policemen, and firemen, converse. Operational success then hinges upon accurate and reliable exchange much of it via radio.
Johnson has been interested in languages since his college days; he also has a passion for sailing. In the three gap years between school and college, he sailed with friends on an ocean going yatcht. After obtaining a degree in Geography and Education at Claire's College, Cambridge, Johnson went on to take another degree at Essex in linguistics. In 1981, he won the English speaking unions' prize for an essay he wrote on Purposeful English. Soon after he met experts from the International Maritime Organisation who were trying to design a language for maritime purposes. "They had in me a grammarian who had experience on the seas. So my wasted youth paid off," jokes Johnson. "English is the international language for maritime operations. I designed the grammar and worked with mariners in the Plymouth Polytechnic. The outcome was SeaSpeak, an accurate language, to put it simply, that prevents ships from crashing into one another and helps seamen in many countries communicate clearly."
After SeaSpeak, Johnson collaborated with Fiona Robertson on a manual for pilots. AirSpeak is used widely by pilots now. It makes sure that everyone is learning the same air traffic language.
The process is not as easy as Johnson makes it appear. Thousands of words have to be sifted through carefully and messages analysed. During the formulation of PoliceSpeak, Johnson transcribed more than a year's worth of police operational messages revealing that 70 per cent of them concerned only 20 subjects. Through a painstaking process of selection and elimination, standardisation had to be brought about and special training programmes initiated to make sure that everyone in that service learnt the same language.
Johnson's research products are therefore dictionaries, manuals, lexicons and computer programmes. He has written a number of books and articles on these languages.
From 1985 to 1991, Johnson also worked on machine translation. "Since machine translations do not work accurately because of the contextual factor, you have to negotiate with the computer as to what your intentions are." This is what Linitext, an improvement on machine translation by Johnson and his colleagues does. "You explain the intention and there are mechanisms to elect that intention."
When the Channel Tunnel was being built between England and France in 1987, the British Police in the county of Kent were drawing up plans for emergency coordination and routine policing duties in the tunnel. "They knew that the tunnel installation would pose impediments to good communication, especially since two operational languages - English and French - would be used. The police sought a technological solution." This led them to machine text developed at Wolfson College, Cambridge. And to Johnson and his research team who worked hard to perfect a translation system that would be effective in the Tunnel project. PoliceSpeak evolved.
Out of PoliceSpeak in turn grew INTACOM (the Inter Agency Communications Project) between Britain and France for fire, ambulance and other rescue services.
Linguanet, the multilingual police communication system, was a further development by Johnson and his team at their company Prolingua. The European Commission at Brussels gave 1.5 million ECU pounds for its research. Linguanet results in instantaneous transmission of enquiries to multiple administrations and in many languages helping to cut across geographical boundaries and time constraints. Its software is configured to run in English, French, Dutch, Flemish and Spanish and it now connects 20 police forces in six European countries - Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the U.K.
Linguanet operates on a private network unlike e-mail and provides fast and accurate transmission of text, speech and high quality graphics. Without knowing a word of the other language, police forces in Europe can exchange information and nab criminals.
Linguanet is based on a broad lexicon of terms used by the police in descriptions of persons vehicles and property as well as major incident situation reports, casualty details, firearms reports and those concerning drugs.
Linguanet was used successfully in solving the murder of an English schoolgirl in Brittany, France. Other cases include the detection of stolen U.K. hired cars which were intercepted at Brussels and a child abduction case in U.K., thwarted in Holland.
Johnson is now engaged in a project called Suremind, with Philips Company. Suremind which is a selective speech elicitation programme again has significant consequences for expediting action during emergencies.
"Linguanet can become a very powerful communication tool in the future," says Johnson. "Not only can it play a central role during crises such as maritime accidents and oil spells but" (what is relevant for us in India now) "also during natural disasters such as earthquakes."
lingua netTMStandardisation of the language used leads to clarity making the crucial difference during a crisis. That's what the languages devised by Johnson do. Ambiguities can mar communication. Giving examples, he says, even a simple message like transmitting the time of the day can be done in different ways - "one o'clock", "13 hundred hours", "one zero zero", etc. There can be 27 ways of instructing a police officer to go somewhere - "attend", "go", "take a run up to", "toddle along to"... Johnson cites a particular exchange by radio where "go ahead" was ambiguous. Here did it mean "speak", "do what you're doing" or "drive forward?". Wrong use of idioms and change into passive voice from the active can often distort the message. There is terminological imprecision and excessive linguistic variety at every level. There can be confusion between different classes of data - times, dates, descriptions and speeds. Abbreviations can be misleading. In one case, says Johnson, "off" was used for both "officer" and "offender" in the same message. Lack of sensitivity to the medium can be a problem. Operators behave, for example, as if radios and telephones transmit the full modular range of the human voice. Among the typical recommendations of Policespeak were: using a small set of standard phrases, "over", "say again", "read back", to replace a variety of conversational controls available in natural language; and transmitting common types of data such as age, sex, car and descriptions of persons in standard ways. |
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