Talk:Interac (Japan)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Education, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of education and education-related topics. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to featured and 1.0 standards, or visit the WikiProject page for more details.
Portal
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Japan, a project to improve all Japan-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other Japan-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
Japan To-do:
Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 16 November 2007. The result of the discussion was Keep.

Contents

[edit] Interac Japan

I came to this article looking for the English training company from Japan. I was going to make a disambiguation link, but there's no article to link to and all I know about the company is that it exists.--Dustin Asby 20:40, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move

Current article does not assert importance of Interac in Japan vs. Interac in Canada for article naming convention. Furthermore, there is a large base of articles already linking to "Interac" only in reference to the Canadian company. Suggesting that the article be moved to "Interac (Japan)" and that "Interac Association" be moved back to "Interac" or that it becomes at least a disambiguation page. AirOdyssey (Talk) 23:49, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

  • Support, the article doesn't assert importance. GreenJoe 00:49, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
    • Moved. GreenJoe 00:54, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Speedy deletion

I only created this article because I personally didn't know much about the company. I was hoping other editors had perhaps been hired by Interact and could shed more light as with Nova (English school in Japan), GEOS (eikaiwa), AEON (eikaiwa), ECC (eikaiwa), Berlitz Language Schools, and JET Programme. I have no motive in advertising Interac because I am probably going through NOVA myself. I was attempting to "be bold".--Dustin Asby 18:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

You've nothing to apologize for - thanks for the contribution! --Ckatzchatspy 18:51, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] similarities to JET

"Interac is a Japanese company which provides Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) for elementary and middle public schools and private companies in a similar manner to the government-run JET Programme."

Exactly what are the similarities? JET teachers are non-Japanese. Interac teachers are non-Japanese. What about teaching hours? Hours required to be at school? Other school official/unofficial duties? What about hiring of teachers? Training programmes? National conferences? Salary? Insurance? Accommodation? I don't work for Interac. I've never known anyone who has worked there. Still, I wonder, what are the similarities. I've already edited the article once. It was reverted. Until someone can point me to a sourced version of the similarities, I'll add a 'citation needed' tag to the line. DDD DDD 05:57, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Similar in that they are ALTs - a specific, official, term used by the Japanese government - who teach in public schools (dissimilar to eikaiwa). Not "the same as" because Interac certainly has their own policies which differ from JET's, even though I don't know what those policies are (I have never worked there either). They also provide services for private companies. I have some of the same questions as you, which is why I created this article. Perhaps there is some more technical definition to the word similar that I am unfamiliar with. If this is the case, feel free to change it, but I do feel it is important to note its simlarity to JET as opposed to (most?) eikaiwa.--Dustin Asby (talk) 00:48, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, I just think that as written, it implies a lot. A lot more than exists. If you want to say that it hires ALTs, say that. That should suffice. There is a link to the ALT article.DDD DDD (talk) 12:37, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More questions than answers

I'm posting this here because I'm not sure anyone wants it on the main page. From what little I can find through official sources, this company seems to be doing some odd things.

International Education Research and Analysis Corporation was registered as a corporation in Utah in 1972 as a business school (NAIC 6114) and voluntarily dissolved in 1992.[1] Selnate International Institute was registered as a dba corporation (doing business as) in 1993, the registration expired in 1999, then the registration was taken up by Selnate USA Company until it expired in 2002.[2] In 1992, Selnate USA Company registered in Utah as a corporation originating in Virginia. It's primary business is providing services to buildings and dwellings (NAIC 5617).[3]

According to the Utah Department of Workforce Services, Selnate USA Company Ltd has between 10 and 19 employees, and the primary business of the company is as a language school (NAIC 611630).[4] Selnate International School and International Education Research and Analysis Corporation are not currently registered with the Utah Department of Commerce.

The domain name selnate.com was created in 1999. It is registed to Selnate USA Co., Ltd. through 2008.[5] The website claims to be that of "Selnate International School" and suggests that international teaching positions in Japan may be available but gives no online information on this.

From time to time, the Selnate Group of Companies looks for teachers to go to Japan to teach English. To learn more about these possible opportunities, visit the Interac Co., Ltd. recruiting website at www.interac.co.jp/recruit. To learn more about Selnate and the programs that are available, call 877-SELNATE (+1 801-356-7060) or e-mail info@selnate.com today.[6]

Some universities list International Education Research and Analysis Corporation or Internac as a possible employer for those wishing to teach in Japan.[7]

Refs --

  1. ^ Utah Department of Commerce Business Entity Search, International Education Research and Analysis Corporation, entity 623772-0142. Accessed 2007-11-21.
  2. ^ Utah Department of Commerce Business Entity Search, Selnate International Institute, entities 2236126-0150 and 2413153-0150. Accessed 2007-11-21.
  3. ^ Utah Department of Commerce Business Entity Search, Selnate USA Co Ltd, entity 1178239-0143. Accessed 2007-11-21.
  4. ^ Utah Department of Workforce Services, specific firm Selnate. Accessed 2007-10-21.
  5. ^ http://www.betterwhois.com
  6. ^ http://www.selnate.com/about.htm Accessed 2007-11-21.
  7. ^ Coventry University University of Teesside University of Melbourne RMIT University

Unless I'm misunderstanding this (completely possible), Selnate is operating in Utah through unregistered fictitious names. I couldn't get any info from the Virginia corporate registration database, but I'm not sure it matters.

There may be a very reasonable explanation for what I found, so I'm posting it here for others to check, explain, expand. Help appreciated. --Busy Stubber (talk) 03:58, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

From the information you have given it seems that the American company only exists in order to recruit for Interac, if that is the case then 10 employees would be plenty.--75.41.187.165 (talk) 21:02, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tags

Why is the del/rev tag still on the article? The deletion review was closed. The article is to remain.DDD DDD (talk) 11:45, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I just removed it, hopefully we can put it all behind us and move on to developing the article Statisticalregression (talk) 18:04, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Interac and government contracts

I've found several Japanese language PDF files and websites of contracts and proposals from/with Interact to/with JICA and various loacal governments. One of the JICA proposals, from Heisei 19 nen (this year) is for 512,420,679円 (4.8 million USD). That's a fair bit of money. Are they relevant? Perhaps to a section, if one were made, of Interac and its affiliations with Japanese government agencies/departments. Any thoughts?

DDD DDD (talk) 10:51, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Can we use these as sources on the English wiki? I don't know how we deal with the language problem -- the website for the company is even in Japanese. I'm stumped here. --Busy Stubber (talk) 17:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
sure we can, there's no problem using foreign language sources on English wikipedia, though it's helpful to notate the language of the source in the citation and when possible it's better an official translation if available. Some of the other articles about eikaiwa (especially Nova) use sources in Japanese... sometimes there is a discussion on how best to translate/interpret the source to maintain accuracy. Statisticalregression (talk) 05:17, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
How do we get a translation so that we can read the pdf files? I don't know what they say. --Busy Stubber (talk) 16:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
well.... to start off I'll see if I can run the PDF's through a machine translation program that I have in the near future and email you the results. They will be difficult to read (jumbled english) but if something looks pertinent/useful I can spend time doing a more accurate translation. Statisticalregression (talk) 02:52, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
oh I almost forgot, you can try doing it yourself - do a google search for "able2extract" and you and use the free trial to open the PDFs and save them as MS word documents, then copy and past the Japanese text from the word document into http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en and use that page to get a quick dirty translation. Far from perfect but you will at least get an idea what the document is pertaining toStatisticalregression (talk) 03:00, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
If translations of Japanese language documents are used as sources for this article, shouldn't we have the translation available (with link to original language document) stored in wiki and attached to this article? Thank you for telling me how I could see a translation myself, but what about the next person who wants to see the translation? I might think that all is a-okay, but that's just me trusting a rough translation that's not openly discussed. WP:Verify needs open-access verification. Can you add translations of the Japanese pdfs as sub-pages to this article or something like that? Is that allowed? --Busy Stubber (talk) 02:57, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

(<- Ideally there will be english versions of the documents or official translations but commonly these are not available. WP's verifiability touches this issue in the same way it touches books that are not widely available... that is to say linking to the original Japanese document affords verifiability but there is no requirement to make something instantaneously verifiable with one click. I hope that makes sense. If someone disagrees with how something has been translated from a Japanese document they can bring it up on the discussion page and it can be discussed and consensus reached. Secondary sources are preferred and in this case the PDF's were talking about are essentially primary documents, so we have to be somewhat cautious how we use them. Secondary sourced based research is encouraged on WP, while primary source based research is a bit of a grey area, and original research is pretty much a no-go... Another thing to consider is that in the case of Japanese sources on the internet (especially news articles) they tend to be extremely perishible - they might be available for a handful of months or weeks but can vanish one day. I would recommend that any reference that points to a Japanese document be cached by webcitation (see http://www.webcitation.org) and use the webcitation link that show exactly where the cached document came from and the time/date it was cached.Statisticalregression (talk) 19:00, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan

Being asked for help I've stopped by here. But I cannot figure what kind of help is requested. --Aphaia (talk) 08:26, 7 February 2008 (UTC)