| Article ID: | iaor20119887 |
| Volume: | 4 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Start Page Number: | 146 |
| End Page Number: | 162 |
| Publication Date: | Sep 2011 |
| Journal: | International Journal of Information and Operations Management Education |
| Authors: | Wee Milam Aiken; Mina Park; Tobin Lindblom; John |
| Keywords: | group decision support, agent based system |
This paper describes a new agent‐based group support system for the effective facilitation of multilingual meetings. Designated Polyglot, the system allows group members to exchange typed comments in any of 57 languages with translations supplied automatically via Google Translate within a few seconds. An example of its use by undergraduate students in the USA exchanging comments in English that were automatically translated to German and Korean demonstrates the software's potential. Two objective evaluators rated the relevant comment comprehension as 93.2% in German and 71.2% in Korean. Based upon an analysis of a back‐translated Test of English as a Foreign Language examination, the former accuracy is considered adequate for a college‐level group discussion, while the latter is not.