Technology-Powered Multilingual Professional and Technical Writing: An Integrative Literature Review of Landmark and the Latest Writing Assistance Tools

Abstract

Introduction: Linguistic research and technological developments have influenced the habits of numerous language and nonlanguage practitioners. However, the wide offering of writing tools is often scattered and does not always reach potential users in a systematized way. Research methodology: This integrative literature review examines scholarly publications to identify writing assistance tools that may serve international and multilingual professionals in different fields. Tools are characterized by working languages, domains, writing stage of application, functionalities, underlying technologies, origin, and type of access. Results and discussion: The analysis reveals that most tools are multilingual, scarce in terms of domains of specialization, and designed to be used in the writing stage, rather than prewriting or postwriting. Natural language generation, translation, implementation of suggestions, and integration into other software are the most common functionalities, often in combination with others. Language-model- based and language-generation tools predominate, followed by neural machine translation and pattern-matching technology. Conclusions and further research: This literature review provides a compendium of writing assistance tools and a framework for their classification. Nevertheless, professionals’ writing needs differ widely, and writing technologies evolve rapidly, so these findings will need to be updated or complemented by different data collection and analytical approaches. One thing is certain: professionals need to stay up to date not only through traditionally reliable sources, but also through nonacademic media that allow them to learn about the latest developments in the field.