1 Why is English considered

to be a lingua franca?
Meaning of lingua franca
is "common means of
communication for
speakers of different first
languages", a bridge
language of sorts.
English as lingua franca
is the use of English in
that sense. ELF is very
wide spread as and it's
much more common to
see people from around
the world conversing in
English rather than
Arabic, Chinese, French...
2 Good English good
opportunities
This question is directly
related to the first one.
We live in a globalised
world and English is a
very big part of that.
There is a lot of
international companies
and companies who do
business internationally.
Employers are more
likely to hire a good
English speaker since
they can communicate
well with foreign
partners and develop
contacts. Also there is
always a better chance
for employment or
studying abroad
(Erasmus for instance)
when you are fluent in
English.
3 Explain the position of
English on the Internet
English is unofficially
considered the universal
language of the Internet.
Reasons for this are the
imperialism in the past

and economical and

political power of English
speaking countries.
English speakers today
are much more likely to
find information they are
looking for on the web
because the biggest
forums most of the how
to guides and scientific
and other literature is
posted in English.
4 What is localisation of
IT/Computing terminology?
Localisation is the
process of adapting
internationally accepted
terminology for a specific
language. Localisation
most occurs in software
developers in their wish
to expand to a certain
market.
5 What is the approach of
Faroese to the English IT
terminology?
Faroese is a North Germanic
language spoken by
approximately 66 000 people.
It has a sparse scientific
vocabulary based on the
language itself. Many Faroese
scientific words are borrowed
or modified versions of English
and Nordic equivalents.
Language is constantly
evolving and many new words
die out before they become
widespread.
6 How did the English
IT/Computing terminology
affect programming
languages?
The syntax of most
programming languages
uses English keywords
(for example: printf,
scanf in C). Some people

argue that knowledge of

English is required in
order to use them. It's
important to recognise
all programming
languages are in a class
of formal languages and
therefore different from
any natural language like
English.
7 Why is there a mess in the
Croatian IT/Computing
terminology?
IT terminology in
Croatian language came
in a sudden burst and
the language didn't have
time to adapt and create
our own terminology so
we went the easier path
and embraced English
terminology. In the
recent years there is an
effort to push localised
terminology into
everyday conversations
but it has produced
limited success.
8 Where is the Croatian
IT/Computing terminology
standardised?
Croatian Standards
Institute in Zagreb, but
there is also a website
called "Portal Hrvatskog
Raunalnog Nazivlja"
( http://hrana.ffzg.hr )
which contains a lot of
terminology and which
goal is to standardise it
further.
9 What is IT jargon? Provide
3 examples, please.
Code Monkey programmer, a person
who writes code
404 error (or just 404) originally an error

message received when

you try to access a web
page that does not exist
on the address you
specified. Sometimes
used in everyday talk
when you try to locate
something that should
be there but isn't.
AI - artificial inteligence
Bug - unexpected error.
Also a tech magazine in
Croatia.
Cloud - Remote storage
on the internet
11 What is Machine
Translation?
Sometimes refered to as
simply MT is a sub-field
of computational
linguistics that
investigates the use of
software to translate text
of speech from one
natural language to
another. Most notable
example is Google's
Translate web based
service.
12 Say something about the
history of Machine
translation
The idea of MT can be
traced back to 17th
century when a
philosopher Rene
Descartes proposed a
universal language. The
field of machine
translation appeared in
Warren Weaver's
Memorandum on
Translation (1949). Since
then the field expanded
rapidly and in the 1970
the French Textile
Institute used MT to
translate abstracts from

and into French, English,

German and Spanish.
MT on the web started in
1996 with SYSTRAN
offering free translation
of small texts, followed
by AltaVista Babelfish
(1997) and a in 2012
Google announced that
Google Translate
translates roughly
enough text to fill 1
million books in a day.
13 Say about the complexity
of human translation process
Human translation
process consist of two
stages: Decoding the
meaning of the source
code and re-encoding
this meaning in target
language. This
seemingly simple
concept is in fact a very
complex cognitive
operation. To decode the
source text we must
interpret and analyse all
the features of the text.
This process requires an
in depth knowledge of
the grammar, semantics,
syntax, idioms etc and
we need the same indepth knowledge to reencode the meaning in
the target language.
14 Explain the approaches to
Machine translation
Rule based -> linking the
structure of the input
sentence with the
structure of the output
sentence using a parser
and an analyzer for the
source language,
generator for the target
language and a transfer
lexicon of the actual

translations. used mostly

in the creation of
dictionaries and
grammar programs
Transfer based -> similar
to interlingual in that it
creates a translation
from an intermediate
representation that
stimulates the meaning
of the original sentence.
It depends partially on
the language pair
involved.
Interlingual -> instance
of rule based machine
translation approaches.
Source language is
transformed into
interlingual language
representation that is
independent of any
language. Target
language in then
generated out of
interlungua.
Dictionary based ->
words will be translated
as they are by dictionary
Statistical -> tries to
generate translations
using statistical methods
based on bilingual text
corpora. Good results
can be achieved
translating similar text if
the corpora is available
for the language pair.
Google translate used
United Nations
documents to train their
system and the accuracy
improved.
Example based -> based
on the idea of analogy.
Translator uses example
sentences form

previously translated
texts.
Hybrid MT -> leverages
the strengths of
statistical and rule based
translation
methodologies. 2 ways:
Rules post processed by
statistics and Statistics
guided by rules.
15 What are problems in
Machine translation? Provide
examples, please.
non-standard speech ->
MT cannot translate non
standard speech with the
same accuracy as
standard language
name entities -> initial
difficulty that arises in
dealing with named
entities is simply
identifying them in text
and are sometimes
mistaken as common
nouns which affects
human readability. To
deal with this problem
different solutions where
tried. Transliteration
would try and find the
letters in target
language that resembled
the name in source
language. This failed and
worsened readability for
example "Southern
California" -> first word
should be translated and
second transliterated but
machines would treat
them as one entity.
Secont attempt is
creating a "do not
translate" list. Third
attempt was class based
where names like 'Ted'
and 'Erica' were simply
replaced with "person"

class token. This resulted

in a decrease of BLEU
scores. Claude Piron
(translator) said that MT
at best automates the
easier part of translator's
job. Harder and more
time consuming part
usually involves doing
research to resolve
ambiguities in the source
text. For example in an
Australian text about
WWII epidemic there was
mention of "Japanese
prisoner of war camp".
Due to two senses in this
example (Japanese
prisoners in an American
POW camp or the other
way round) it is
necessary to do research
maybe even to the
extent of a phone call to
Australia
16 What is a quality English
learning website?
quality English learning
website is the one with lots of
materials with examples
provided, audio files filmed by
native speakers. Also a good
addition is phrases in colloquial
or verbal English and a
glossary of slang. It should
have quizzes and grammar
exercises. It is hard to find a
one website that does all of that
good and is free. It always
helps to learn by watching
movies and reading or listening
to audio books as an addition to
learning grammatical rules and
phrases.
17 Name the reasons for the
dominance of English on the
Internet
English is one of the
most widespread

languages on the planet.

Reasons for that is
imperialism in the past
and political and
economical power of
English speaking
countries. After all
Internet was designed in
U.S.A. which is an
English speaking country.
18 What does the term
Grammar Nazi mean? Say your
opinion about it.
The term Grammar Nazi
is used to describe
internet users who
correct other people's
grammar on message
boards, comment
sections, and similar
internet discussions. 19 Is
English the official language of
the Internet? Explain in detail,
please.
English doesn't have the
status of the official
language of the internet
and it will never have.
Doing that would
polarize the world into
Internet users and
Internet illiterates. In
addition, English
language used on the
internet is a combination
of different languages
which share the common
origin in the English
language used in
England. We have
American English,
Australian English,
people who speak
English as a foreign
language etc. and all of
them can understand
each other more or less
but none of them speak
the exact same
language.

20 What is a dictionary?
collection of words in
one or more specific
languages, often listed
alphabetically with
usage of information,
definitions, etymologies,
phonetics,
pronunciations,
translation and other
information.
21 What is a dictionary of
synonyms/antonyms/homony
ms/abbreviations/collocations
Those are specialised
dictionaries different
from the traditional
dictionary. for example
dictionary of synonyms
and sometimes
antonyms is called a
thesaurus
22 What are advantages of
software dictionaries?

they are convenient in

the sense that they are
instantly accessible if
they are published on
the web. they are quickly
searchable. They are
also automatically
updated so you don't
have to buy a book
every couple of years,
and most of them are
free.
Biggest drawback is
dependability of the
source.
23 What are the features of a
quality English dictionary?
Quality dictionary must
be current,
comprehensive and
should have definitions,
phonetics, and
pronunciations.
24 What is Pidgin English?

simplified version of
English that develops a
means of communication
between two or more
groups that do not have
a language in common
25 What is Engrish?
Broken English in short. Slang
term for the misuse or
corruption of the English
language by native speakers of
some East Asian languages.
The term itself relates to
Japanese speakers tendency to
inadvertently substitute English
phnemes R and L for one
another because the Japanese
has only one Alveolar
consonant in place of both.
Although it refers to spoken
English it's more often used to
describe written English.