Corporate Voice, Tone of Voice and Controlled Language Techniques

Corporate documentation and publications should signal the company's key personality values. In this paper we show that the concept of Controlled Language may be extended to also cover Tone-of-Voice, and we see similarities and differences between Readability and Tone-of-Voice. %DFNJURXQGGDQGG3XUSRVH ,QWURGXFWLRQQ Many companies are realising the opportunities offered by language technology for supporting and streamlining document production, not only at the level of using correct terminology etc, but also at the level of supporting the right Tone-of-Voice of the corporate language. The present paper presents results in this area achieved in the Danish VID project (VIden og Dokumenthåndtering med sprogteknologi – Knowledge and Document Handling with Language Technology). VID is headed by Center for Sprogteknologi (Centre for Language Technology). The project group includes three large Scandinavian companies with high demands for quality and efficiency regarding document production, as well as two Danish technology companies specialised in search and knowledge organization participating as technology providers. The aim of the project is to examine, develop and/or refine HLT techniques for acquiring and representing relevant parts of domain knowledge and corporate language in the participating companies, specifically oriented towards information retrieval as well as efficient and high quality production of documents. %DFNJURXQGG Two of the Danish companies mentioned above, namely Bang & Olufsen and Nordea, are both working in the domestic as well as the export markets, and they need to express themselves in many languages, their corporate language being English. The companies want automatic support for their writing of user documentation, corporate communication texts etc. Both companies aim at high quality texts. Both companies are high profile, and they have developed a corporate image which should be supported by the language used in the written documentation. I.e. if the company image signals 'solidity', 'loyalty', 'quality', 'fun', 'creativity' or 'design', such characteristics should also be signalled by the language of their documentation. 2EMHFWLYHV Consequently, the aim of this study is twofold: on the one hand a tool is sought which can help produce high quality text, with the amount of consistency, clarity etc. necessary, and on the other hand a tool is sought which can support the specific corporate voice of each company. The challenge is to combine these two objectives in one tool. The type of tool which is the result of this investigation is depending on Controlled Language (CL) techniques to a very high degree. However, the language it defines, is …