Talk:Interac (Japan)/Archive 1

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)

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)

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! --Ckatz chat spy  18:51, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

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)

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. 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. 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).

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). 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. 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.

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

Refs --

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)

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)

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)
 * 平成１９年 JICA 512,420,679円 proposal
 * 平成１８年JICA proposal
 * 平成１８年JICA announce
 * 平成１８年 Arakawa elementary (pp. 12-06-16) and junior high school (pp. 12-06-17)
 * 平成１８年 Onojo city, Fukuoka, elementary and junior high schools
 * 平成１9年Kaizuka, Osaka, Registration number 9132
 * Osaki, Miyagi, Registration number 585-1, 40,000,000 円!
 * 平成１８年Kyoto city, 91,161,525円!


 * 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)


 * Marked the dead links here.KeroroGunso (talk) 07:13, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

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)

What type of company?
This article is categorised as Category:English conversation schools in Japan - but does it actually provide conversation classes like say ECC and Aeon? I *think* that it just provides language teachers for Schools (and private institutions) - see first paragraph. Should this be categorised differently? What other companies are like this? --Boy.pockets (talk) 09:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * This categorization is wrong. There is no evidence that Interac has a "school" in the sense of a fixed place with classrooms, teachers, and students. The company page uses terms like "International Education" and "Global Education" to refer to services.  In such, it is closer to Benesse than a conversation school like those near train stations.  This category should be deleted.KeroroGunso (talk) 09:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

While they don't have schools as such, they do dispatch teachers to teach business classes at companies. They also occasionally do some lessons at their own offices but this is rare. Considering the category is for people interested in teaching in Japan I would recommend it be included in eikaiwa. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.140.72.82 (talk) 06:46, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Need for correction
This does not describe Interac in an encyclopedic manner.KeroroGunso (talk) 08:23, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I am going to start correcting 404 links and other obvious problems.--KeroroGunso (talk) 06:05, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Changes made 9 Feb. 2011 to the Introduction

1. "Roice Kreuger" The URL is 404, so the reference is deleted. There is no other reliable information source linking this name to Interac.


 * Some digging revealed that Mr. Kreuger was simply a manager at the time of founding.KeroroGunso (talk) 08:35, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

2. "Selnate International School" The school's page says "Its language education center operates in Provo, Utah and places English teachers in public schools throughout Japan" which indicates that it is a part of the Japanese organization, not its owner as stated in the article. There is no reliable information that can support the claim that the Selnate International School owns Interac the Japanese company.

3. "Yasuo Niiyama" Deleted. No longer the owner of the company. Although the founder, without current involvement in the company it is not relevant to the introduction. If it is relevant anywhere, it would be in a separate section on the history of the company.


 * Some digging revealed that Mr. Niiyama was not the founder.KeroroGunso (talk) 08:35, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

4. "D.H. Groberg" The URL is 404, so the reference is deleted.


 * I looked for some kind of link to Mr. Groberg (the author of The Japanese language by sight and sound) and Interac. I can't find any.  What could be seen is the same kind of attempt to create a conspiracy theory.KeroroGunso (talk) 09:12, 22 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I did find a link. He was a "President" at Interac.KeroroGunso (talk) 07:46, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

5. Use of "provide vs. outsource vs dispatch". In this section, "provide" is a broader term which is appropriate to the nature of Interac's business. If the topic of worker dispatch or outsourcing is to be brought up, it should be on a page dedicated to the topic, or moved to the Assistant Language Teacher page, as Interac is not the only company in Japan operating under these conditions.

6. Year of founding deleted from the Introduction. It is in the side column. KeroroGunso (talk) 08:07, 9 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Sorry, had to undo some of that. Dead links are tagged, not deleted; we give the benefit of the doubt that the URL was originally correct. The Selnate Group owns Interac, an easy rewrite. Year of founding restored, as the infobox serves to augment the article, not replace copy. --Ckatz chat spy  08:30, 9 February 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, I can understand tagging links.KeroroGunso (talk) 08:35, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

This page needs an admin to help it. Basically, while some of the content is true and representative of Interac as a company, a large portion of it is spam from anti-Interac unions.

It cannot be NPOV is the only POV is the union's?

A major point that needs to be fixed is the issue of ownership. The so-called 'Selnate Group' (which never was) was dissolved last year, and the school in Utah, while sharing a name, was owned by part of the former entity. Now, Interac is a single company, and while those other companies may conduct business in the same areas, they are neither owners nor subsidiaries. In that case, each deserves their own unique entry, and they could be linked to each other, but they are not 'group companies' nor part of some greater group. In short, there is no evidence to show that 'Interac is owned by the Selnate Group of Companies in Provo, Utah in the United States.' This would be impossible since: 1) There is no Selnate Group, 2) Interac is a Japanese company. The type of logic holding that argument together is like saying that a fish is a bird because they both come from eggs.

The sections on Controversy, the Contract System, and Union Presence would be better moved to the Assistant Language Teacher entry as part of '3 Union Activity and ALTs.' These types of issues are not unique to Interac alone, as there are several dozen companies involved in the same type of business in Japan.KeroroGunso (talk) 02:03, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

On the tip of KeroroGunso, Interac and Selnate were connected by Interac N. America (the hiring America hiring branch of Interac Co Ltd.) up until March 2010 when Interac was purchased by Advantage Partners (Ref 6). Interac N. America and Selnate International School had several ties and shared a facility at 1502 North Freedom Boulevard Provo, Utah. Selnate is Suite B and Interac N. America occupied Suite C. As a side note, it seems Interac N. America has become a formal entity called Interac America. Laevatienn (talk) 22:00, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Contract System
This section is pretty thin at best. The idea was to propose the soapbox idea that gyomu-itaku contracts are illegal in Japan. As such, they are not in themselves illegal and are commonly used.

Although the (2) link to the Japan Times is real, the question is its neutrality. This article is a Dear Abby with Louis Carlet, who is from the General Union. (Incorrect, Carlet is not a member of the General Union and never has been He he was a member of a union called Tokyo Nambu but left and formed Tokyo General Union. This union is in no way affiliated with the General Union). Of course the union is going to give the answers they want to hear in the article. Then to reference that in the article seems like a roundabout way of giving him a soapbox with the veneer of journalistic legitimacy.

The link (3) to alt150.com is questionable. This is a scan of a document in Japanese with some attempt at translation. Is this a credible source? Is this a real source? How does anyone know that this is not a fabricated document that was scanned and put up on a free hosting site? Even if it is accepted as real, it does not say that the contracts are illegal.

The relevance to an entry on Interac is thin. If the aim is to manufacture a story about contracts, this should be moved to the General Union page, or the Assistant Language Teacher page.KeroroGunso (talk) 09:17, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the need to improve this article, I placed a WP:DEAD LINK template on the article.KeroroGunso (talk) 08:05, 24 February 2011 (UTC)