October 6, 1994: Vol26n5: World Languages Institute: The Accent is on Public Service

By STEVE COX
Reporter Staff

Dunkirk Radiators, a manufacturer of home heating boilers located
about 50 miles south of Buffalo, began promoting their products in the
developing markets of Asia shortly after the former Soviet Union
collapsed. As the pace of sales picked up, management realized there
were new hurdles to cross, including the fact that none of Dunkirk's
140 employees could speak, let alone write, Russian.
	Enter UB's World Languages Institute (WLI). Contacted for help
by Dunkirk Radiators, WLI Director Mark Ashwill delivered Maxim
Bujakov, a graduate student in civil engineering who hails from
suburban Moscow. He spent some 200 hours translating installation
instructions and technical manuals for boilers the company makes, into
Russian.
	"We had some help before from companies we work with in Russia
with translating short sales pieces and the like," said Carl Mayer,
director of engineering, "but had never attempted anything like
translating a 30-page installation manual." This year, with translated
manuals in hand, Mayer expects to sell between 600 and 700 boilers in
Russia.
	For Bujakov, it was a heartwarming opportunity to contribute
to development in his homeland. "Where I lived," he explained, "very
few homes had individual heating boilers. Most were heated centrally
with larger boilers that failed often."
	Translation and interpreting services are just part of the
public service work WLI does for area concerns, explained Ashwill. "We
have offered non-credit courses like Spanish for Medical Personnel, to
help Children's Hospital staff deal with non-English-speaking
patients, and Spanish for Business for employees of Praxair," Ashwill
said, "and we even supplied an interpreter for (Buffalo Bisons owner)
Robert Rich when he had a Russian visitor in town." Other area
employers who have taken advantage of Institute programs include
Computer Task Group, Conax Buffalo, Ecostar International, IIMAK, the
Marriott Hotel and SUNY Research Foundation.
	The Institute, which Ashwill characterizes as the "service
unit" of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures,
specializes in less commonly taught languages. Now located on the
second floor of Clemens Hall, the Institute offers Arabic, Danish,
Modern Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Vietnamese,
Thai, Korean and Swahili.
	The staff includes 16 faculty members, many of whom are part
time; they teach classes as well as searching out and developing
self-instruction materials. Approximately 300 students per semester
are enrolled in WLI courses, according to Ashwill. Although none of
the programs have degree status, he pointed out that Japanese will
soon be available as a minor.
aking a language through WLI
 	is not for the faint of heart. "Japanese classes, for
instance, meet five times a week," explained Ashwill, "with a team
teaching approach that has students working intensively with the oral
and written aspects of the language." The rigor requires a "highly
motivated" student, he added, and instructors know how to ferret out
"native speakers looking for an easy A."
	Students are drawn to the Institute for a variety of reasons.
"With Korean, many of the students are Korean but were born in the
United States and never learned their native language," noted Ashwill.
Students of Arabic may be interested in reading the Koran or planning
on careers involving the Middle East, and Japanese, the Institute's
most popular program, is taken for both practical and academic
reasons, Ashwill explained.
	Although the focus is turning more toward classroom study,
some languages are still made available on a supervised self-study
basis.
	"We have five students taking a supervised self-study course
in Indonesian, some of whom are graduate students in anthropology who
will be using the language in the field," said Ashwill. "The author of
their textbook, from Cornell, comes here to administer their
examination when the course is completed."
	The success of WLI in attracting students from a variety of
disciplines to its courses has also fueled the growth of the Asian
Studies program in the History Department. Asian Studies Director
Thomas Burkman said that "Large enrollments of engineering and
management students, for instance, in WLI languages evidences the
interest there is among students for courses in Asian Studies." The
proposed minor in Asian Studies will include a significant language
component, according to Burkman.
	Most incoming freshmen receive early exposure to the
Institute, though they may not realize it. An early supporter of the
university's new requirement of intermediate proficiency in a foreign
language by undergraduates, WLI plays a large role in administering
the Foreign Language Placement Testing, Ashwill said.       o