provide seafarers with at least a minimum device of communication, a
kind of restricted safety language or some sort of maritime English "survival
package" exceeding the IMO - Standard Marine Navigational Vocabulary (SMNV), 1985, in
so far as it should allow for recent developments and problems in maritime communications.
So IMO Maritime Safety Committee on its 60th Session in February 1992 decided "to
instruct the Sub-Committee on Safety of Navigation... to develop on the basis of the
'SMNV' and 'Seaspeak' an 'IMO language'" (1). The Sub-Committee on Safety of
Navigation on its 39th Session in September 1993 upon the initiative of Germany in turn
established a Working Group and a Correspondence Group chaired by the author and
instructed them to develop a phrase- book which "should build on a minimum level of
knowledge of the English language and phrases drafted in a simplified version of maritime
English" (2). NAV 39 furthermore stated that "the phrase- book should be...
aimed at all crew members" (3) - a problem still pending satisfactory solution.
IMO expects that following a test period of 18 months after May 1997
the finalized "IMO - Standard Marine Communication Phrases", as the project is
officially titled, will be available in a printed edition and on diskette and cassette in
1999; to produce an audio version of the SMCP together with the printed one is, by the
way, following a suggestion submitted at IMO -NAV 40 by the IMLA SubCom on Maritime
English.
2 The "IMO - Standard Marine Communication Phrases" (SMCP)
2.1 Methodism
The linguistic means applied to a restricted and widely standardized
safety language for shipping should be simple but effective. That's why IMO - NAV SubCom
after sometimes controversial in - depth discussions in its SMCP - Working Group retained
the phrase-book approach which the SMNV, 1985, has also been based upon. A so-called
generative approach as partly used in the Seaspeak Reference Manual (4) would have been
also imaginable but did not find a majority. IMO - NAV SubCom felt the the phrase-book
approach to be linguistically less demanding to the users, i.e. the ships' officers and
other maritime personnel.
Furthermore, a phrase-book is easily accessible to computerization,
e.g. automatic translation, computer aided instruction, etc.. The International Civil
Aviation Organization (ICAO), by the way, in its Communication Procedures (5) which to
take into account IMO -NAV SubCom has been advised by IMO - MSC, likewise applies the
phrase-book approach, but there the number of phrases is comparatively small, the
situations covered less complex and they are not
