The number of foreign students in Japanese universities has been increasing rapidly year by year*. This is regarded as the result of various support programs such as the ‘Global 30 Program’** provided by the Japanese Government.
　For example, my laboratory in Kyoto University includes seven faculty members and twenty one graduate students now. Among them, two of the faculty members and eleven graduate students are from foreign countries such as China, Nepal, Finland, Australia and United States. We expect a few more from Netherland, Indonesia and Vietnam in the next semester.
　Before the Global 30 Program was launched, most classes and course works were given in Japanese. As a result, foreign students, first of all, had to learn Japanese. Though research discussions could be done in English, since the majority of laboratory members were Japanese, it was natural that they thought the official language to be Japanese, all announcements and daily discussions were done in Japanese in due course.
　But, the situation has dramatically changed in the last few years. Our department has officially announced that students could finish their Master and PhD courses in English, classes and course works would be given in both English and Japanese. For the time being, major players in my laboratory, especially in the PhD courses, are foreign students.
　As a result, a serious language problem has arisen in the laboratory. Most Japanese students are not good at speaking, listening to, and writing English, though they can read English quite well. Most Chinese and other Asian students are not really fluent in English when they arrive at the laboratory. Many foreign students can speak Japanese but not read it or write it well. Instead, some foreign students don’t understand Japanese at all.

Fig.1 Students presenting and discussing their research topics in a multi-language and multi-culture environment to communicate their research ideas in their mother languages, in the laboratory.

　The question is what language we should use in the laboratory for daily research discussions. Shall we keep Japanese as the official language? Shall we shift from Japanese to English to follow the globalization trend of education and research activities? Or, shall we create a multi-language, multi-culture laboratory, which no one has ever tried before?
　It is not easy to answer this question, but we are currently trying the third direction: towards a multi-language, multi-culture laboratory. Since we have Chinese and Australian faculty members, we decided to allow students to present their work in Japanese, English, Chinese or mixed one, if students think it is the best way for them to communicate their research ideas. Please do not see this as the common trend in Japanese universities. This would be a quite extreme example of the third direction because a scheme of our laboratory is to study Intercultural Collaboration (see it at http://www.ai.soc.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp/intercultural_collaboration.html).
　To support the multi-language communication, we have developed a multi-language community site using the Language Grid *** that enables students to use multi-language chat and presentations. Fortunately, most students prepare English slides and documents, though their English is not very good. In the worst case, students just try to use the machine translation function of the Language Grid to create English slides and documents, but it might be still better than doing nothing. A few Japanese students use English for their presentation, and the other Japanese students stick with Japanese. From the standpoint of reciprocity, why then can’t allow foreign students use their mother tongue? That is the reason why we allow all students to use any language for their presentation. Of course, the goal is to find the best way of communicating their research ideas over the language barrier.
　We all understand that English is the most efficient language in a research community for Informatics. At the same time, we believe in the spirit of respecting different languages and cultures, and of doing our best towards intercultural communication to help students to work together in Asia and the world in future, where the diversity would be the first principle.
What do you think? Is it a good idea?

Note:
* The trend of increasing international students in Japan over the past thirty years is analyzed, and introduced on the Web, at http://www.jasso.go.jp/statistics/intl_student/data10_e.html.
** The Project for Establishing University Network for Internationalization (Global 30) was commenced by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in 2009, to foster internationalization of Japanese universities through core universities with English degree programs, toward the goal of the "300,000 International Students Plan" proposed by Japanese Government in 2008, to receive them every year, by 2020 (http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-kokusaika/outline.html).
*** See the details at http://langrid.org/en/index.html or IEICE Global Plaza article contributed by the same author (IEICE Journal, vol.93, no.10, 2010, http://www.ieice.org/eng/global_plaza/2009/21.html#1). IEICE TFIPP will apply the multi-language capabilities of Language Grid to the communication by IEICE members on the Web in the near future. See another article contributed by Dr.Yohei Murakami (IEICE Journal, vol.93, no.5, 2010, http://www.ieice.org/eng/global_plaza/2009/16.html#3 ) (IEICE-TFIPP, Kenzo Takahashi)

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