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Arta
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Quote Arta Replybullet Topic: How many FSI courses have been developed?
    Posted: 16 October 2006 at 2:33am
Hi. I just found your site and am impressed with your work. You have taken on a gargantuan task. Congrats all around.

I'm impressed enought that I'd like to get involved is some useful way.

I've been self-studying Spanish for six months now and am just getting a feel for the language. This is my first foreign language and I get a thrill every time I understand a pharse or short exchange on Latino TV and radio.

FSI Spanish Prog. is just right for me. I need the drill and focus on pronunciation... the weakness of self-study is not having immediate feedback of one's accent.

BTW, sometimes the Spanish words go by too fast to get the nuance of the inflections. I found that Windows Media Player has a speed control that makes the Spanish nuggets easier to understand the first time through.

If you don't mind a few question...: How many different language courses did the Foreign Service Inst. develop?

Is there an FSI master language list that you are working from?

Could you post it?

Another post here started me wondering if all the US FSI language courses were written, understandably, for the native English speakers. Is there say a Spanish course for native German speakers in the FSI catalog?

Are all/most/some of the courses designed like the FSI Spanish Programmatic course? Understanding any government's penchant for broad uniformity makes me suspect that the rest of the FSI courses are quite similar.

Perhaps this is an obvious question, forgive me, but has FSI, itself, been contacted?

FSI is the source of all that material and they just might be helpful in getting their public domain language courses to the public over the internet.

Again, thanks for your great work!



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gaucho
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Quote gaucho Replybullet Posted: 16 October 2006 at 7:23am
Hi Arta:

Welcome!

Look at the NTIS catalog of language programs:

http://www.ntis.gov/pdf/pr1002.pdf

That should answer some of your questions. I don't think the FSI itself would have published courses for non-native English speakers since its mission is to train US diplomats (and their families) for overseas service.

Alles Gute! 

Edited by gaucho - 16 October 2006 at 7:26am
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Chung
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Quote Chung Replybullet Posted: 16 October 2006 at 6:01pm
Originally posted by Arta


Is there an FSI master language list that you are working from?

Could you post it?
 

Gaucho posted a link to NTIS' catalogue so have a look to see what's still out there and see where the gaps are.
 
As far as I can tell from other posts on the forum, here's the status of the courses for the website.
 
Arabic: gdfellows has already scanned a couple of guides onto the site. He does have the materials for Saudi Arabic (Urban Hijazi) but hasn't got around to putting them online.
 
Cambodian: rikker has found a copy of the text for Cambodian Vol. 1. I assume that he's looking into scanning it into .pdf provided that the book isn't from a private reseller such as Multilingual Books, Audio-Forum etc.
 
Cantonese: It's done.
 
Finnish: I ordered Conversational Finnish from NTIS and if all goes well, the files should start appearing in a few months.
 
French: About 2/3 of the material is online, gdfellows is working on getting the rest online.
 
German: It's done.
 
Greek: It's 98% done. I think that gdfellows didn't get one of the chapters for uploading.
 
Hebrew: SoTxBPA found a copy of the text for Hebrew, so I presume that he's looking into scanning it into .pdf
 
Hungarian: gdfellows has the materials but hasn't started putting it online.
 
Indonesian: Malcolm is working on scanning the text of "Indonesian Newspaper Reader"
 
Italian: gdfellows has the materials but hasn't started putting it online.
 
Korean: I think that gdfellows has some materials, but not everything. Malcolm is working on digitalizing Vol. 2 which he picked up from NTIS.
 
Mandarin: About 75% of the course is done and smoen has lent the last module to gdfellows. It should be finished relatively soon.
 
Portuguese: It's 98% done. I think that gdfellows didn't get one of the chapters for uploading.
 
Serbo-Croatian: Daristani has lent a clearer copy of the text for Vol. 1, but gdfellows hasn't got around to uploading it yet.
 
Spanish: Spanish Programmatic is done, but Sir Nigel, gdfellows and I think that daristani are working on getting the full Spanish Basic Course online.
 
Swedish: The first three units are online, with the rest to follow courtesy Demipuppet and gdfellows.
 
Thai: Malcolm is scanning the texts for Vols. 1 and 2.
 
Turkish: Vol. 1 is done. Demipuppet is working on Vol. 2
 
Vietnamese: Demipuppet is working on Vols. 1 and 2.
 
As you can see, several courses are already sitting at a contributor's desk just waiting to be digitalized. Judging from gdfellows' posts on this subject, the priorities are the completion of French, Mandarin and Basic Spanish. After that, Arabic, Swedish, Turkish Vol. 2 and Vietnamese seem to be tied as a close second priority (but I could be wrong). The expected arrival of the other languages are harder to determine since a few people are working on them and everyone's schedule is different. I'm sure that some of the people who want to get their hands of Hungarian for example may need to wait some more as the other languages in the queue get finished off.
 
In any case, I hate to think that people start putting undue pressure on the contributors, since it is a time-consuming (and sometimes expensive) process to get a course and then digitalize it.  I just digitalized some old tapes as backup, and let me tell you, it is tedious and takes a lot of time. It's hard to run off and do other tasks for any length of time, since the recording for each side of a tape usually stops after 20 to 30 minutes. Thus every 20 to 30 minutes, you run back down to your computer and then sit there for about 30 minutes with the software to reduce the hiss, normalize, splice the recording into tracks, convert the file to mp3 and put tags on every mp3. After all that you repeat the procedure for the other side of the tape... (Scanning into .pdf can be a little easier if your scanner has an auto-feeder, but it's still time-consuming.)
 
Originally posted by Arta


Perhaps this is an obvious question, forgive me, but has FSI, itself, been contacted?

FSI is the source of all that material and they just might be helpful in getting their public domain language courses to the public over the internet.

Again, thanks for your great work!


 
I don't think that FSI has been contacted. Then again, the argument here is that the original courses were created at FSI (part of the State Department) and because of their origins in an agency of the Federal Government, they're in the public domain and have no copyright protection in the USA. In theory, there shouldn't be a problem with this website. In practice, things may not be so clear.
 
We have tried to sort things out on another language forum, but after the administrator directed our legal questions to a member of that forum who claimed to be a paralegal, we never heard back. It was very odd. I'm sure that it would be helpful if we could get definitive proof from a copyright lawyer or the Federal Government that what we're doing is fine, since we've had to do the research ourselves and interpret  statements from government websites along the lines of:
 
************

Publications Incorporating U. S. Government Works

Works by the U. S. government are not eligible for U. S. copyright protection. For works published on and after March 1, 1989, the previous notice requirement for works consisting primarily of one or more U. S. government works has been eliminated. However, use of a notice on such a work will defeat a claim of innocent infringement as previously described provided the notice also includes a statement that identifies either those portions of the work in which copyright is claimed or those portions that constitute U. S. government material.

Example: © 2006 Jane Brown. Copyright claimed in Chapters 7—10, exclusive of U.S. government maps

Copies of works published before March 1, 1989, that consist primarily of one or more works of the U. S. government should have a notice and the identifying statement.

(source: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#piu)
 
*********
 
  Is U.S. Government information copyrighted?
 
Information on the Department of State website is in the public domain and may be copied and distributed without permission, unless a copyright is indicated.

If a copyright is indicated, for example on a photo, graphic or other material, permission to copy these materials must be obtained from the original source. For photos without captions or with only partial captions, hold your cursor over the photo to view the "alt tag" for any copyright information.

Please note that the U.S. Government has an international copyright on Country Commercial Guides.

Generally, U.S. Government materials are considered in the public domain unless otherwise specified as copyrighted. For more information on copyrights for U.S. Government information, please visit the following website: http://foia.state.gov/masterdocs/05fam/05m0480.pdf 

source: http://contact-us.state.gov/cgi-bin/state.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=157&p_created=1140184922&p_sid=aTEOPkki&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9NCZwX3Byb2RzPSZwX2NhdHM9MCZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PWNvcHlyaWdodA**&p_li=&p_topview=1
 
*********
 
When it comes to the FSI courses, it may be hard to tell whether they are all truly in the public domain. On one hand, it seems that the people who designed the courses were employees of FSI and were creating the courses as part of their full-time job duties. This would lead to the works being publications of the Federal Government and thus in the public domain. On the other hand, if these creators had been working only as part of a government contract, then they would be private contractors and should hold copyright on their creations, with the government only having a license on the work. I'd hate to think that we all get in trouble and possibly sued for distributing the stuff for free because we neglected to cover all of our legal bases. As far as I can tell, no one from the government so far has given a clear response whether this website is "on-side".
 
I checked the websites of the Government Printing Office, ERIC and the State Department, but couldn't find anything useful pertaining to the FSI courses (apart from the massive .pdf file of the textbook from the FSI Czech Basic Course)
 
NTIS is a distrubtor of government-sponsored documents (federal, state and municipal) and doesn't seem to mind charging for its materials. Here're a few bits from the FAQ section: http://www.ntis.gov/about/faq.asp?loc=6-2-0
 
*******
What exactly is the National Technical Information Service?
The National Technical Information Service proudly serves as our nation's largest central source for government-sponsored scientific, technical, engineering, and related business information. NTIS has over 3 million information titles in its collection!
 
[...]
 
Why does NTIS charge for its products?
Title 15, U.S. Code 1151-7 directs NTIS to recover its costs from the sale of its products and services. All the costs of its products and services, including salaries, cataloging and indexing, permanent storage and retrieval, and postage, are paid from sales income.
 
[...]
 
Why does one federal agency pay another (NTIS) for documents?
Federal agencies are also customers of NTIS products and services. The sales to the general public do not subsidize the dissemination of documents to other agencies.
 
*******
 
It doesn't seem that the Federal government is interested in distributing these courses for free, not only because they're in demand, but NTIS also has an order from Title 15 to cover its costs.
 
Regards
Chung


Edited by Chung - 17 October 2006 at 10:24am
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Arta
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Quote Arta Replybullet Posted: 16 October 2006 at 10:47pm
Thanks gaucho

I did check out the link for the catalog.

>Alles Gute!
LOL -- That was just an example. Actually, I'm a monoglot, but am trying to change that. You see, I am an American ;-). The fact is I was intiminated by the cost of learning new languages. I have dictionaries for Spanish, Greek, Latin and a few others plus a dozen or two books and CD on learning Spanish.

I wish I had started with FSI first... it would have saved a lot of time and money. At least it feels like I am now finally learning Spanish.

I hope it is ok to post an old joke...
What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? Trilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages? Bilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks only 1 language? American.


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Arta
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Quote Arta Replybullet Posted: 16 October 2006 at 11:18pm
Thank you for responding with so much info

>As far as I can tell from other posts on the forum, here's the status of the courses for the website.

The long list of courses each with a different status cries out for a matrix.

>In any case, I hate to think that people start putting undue pressure on the contributors...

So what if I make an XHTML table for the matrix and, if y'all like it you could put it up somewhere? Then when new files are uploaded to the site, simply update the matrix.

As for the legalities, I am an engineer, not a lawyer. I think you are ok buy my opinion is not worth a dime on legalities.

If a definative answer is needed I would contact the EFF or Electronic Frontier Foundation at

http://www.eff.org/

"EFF is a nonprofit group of passionate people — lawyers, technologists, volunteers, and visionaries — working to protect your digital rights."

They have, or have access to some heavy-weight talent and the public domain is just their cup of tea. I'm sure they will *give* you an opinion and a few caveats to keep the site from transgressing somebodys something.

Thanks for the great response
Arta



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smoen
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Quote smoen Replybullet Posted: 17 October 2006 at 8:49am
Great summary. Thanks!!! One small point, and not to be picky because you did a great amount of research through these forums, but you forgot
 
Standard Chinese - gdfellows has all the materials, and about 75% or so of the course is posted.
 
Again, thanks for the excellent summary.
 
SteveM
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patuco
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Quote patuco Replybullet Posted: 17 October 2006 at 1:24pm
He didn't forget Standard Chinese, he just called it Mandarin.

Thanks for the summary in any case.


Edited by patuco - 17 October 2006 at 1:25pm
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Quote smoen Replybullet Posted: 17 October 2006 at 1:40pm
Oops, Sorry.
 
I'm embarassed.
 
Thanks
SteveM
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raincrowlee
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Quote raincrowlee Replybullet Posted: 18 October 2006 at 10:02pm
Originally posted by Chung


I don't think that FSI has been contacted. Then again, the argument here is that the original courses were created at FSI (part of the State Department) and because of their origins in an agency of the Federal Government, they're in the public domain and have no copyright protection in the USA. In theory, there shouldn't be a problem with this website. In practice, things may not be so clear.


What exactly are your questions? My sister is a patent lawyer, and actually just started working at the Patent Office about a month ago. Maybe she can get you the answers you need.
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Chung
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Quote Chung Replybullet Posted: 18 October 2006 at 10:28pm
Raincrowlee, I just sent a PM.
 
Thanks
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