Produced by Al Haines
THE INTERNET AND LANGUAGES
[around the year 2000]
MARIE LEBERT
NEF, University of Toronto, 2009
Copyright © 2009 Marie Lebert. All rights reserved.
TABLE
Introduction
"Language nations" online
Towards a "linguistic democracy"
Encoding: from ASCII to Unicode
First multilingual projects
Online language dictionaries
Learning languages online
Minority languages on the web
Multilingual encyclopedias
Localization and internationalization
Machine translation
Chronology
Websites
INTRODUCTION
It is true that the internet transcends the limitations of time,distances and borders, but what about languages? Non-English-speakinginternet users reached 50% in July 2000.
# "Language Nations"
"Because the internet has no national boundaries, the organization ofusers is bounded by other criteria driven by the medium itself. Interms of multilingualism, you have virtual communities, for example, ofwhat I call 'Language Nations'… all those people on the internetwherever they may be, for whom a given language is their nativelanguage. Thus, the Spanish Language nation includes not only Spanishand Latin American users, but millions of Hispanic users in the U.S.,as well as odd places like Spanish-speaking Morocco." (Randy Hobler,consultant in internet marketing for translation products and services,September 1998)
# "Linguistic Democracy"
"Whereas 'mother-tongue education' was deemed a human right for everychild in the world by a UNESCO report in the early 1950s, 'mother-tongue surfing' may very well be the Information Age equivalent. If theinternet is to truly become the Global Network that it is promoted asbeing, then all users, regardless of language background, should haveaccess to it. To keep the internet as the preserve of those who, byhistorical accident, practical necessity, or political privilege,happen to know English, is unfair to those who don't." (Brian King,director of the WorldWide Language Institute, September 1998)
# A medium for the world
"It is very important to be able to communicate in various languages. Iwould even say this is mandatory, because the information given on theinternet is meant for the whole world, so why wouldn't we get thisinformation in our language or in the language we wish? Worldwideinformation, but no broad choice for languages, this would be quite acontradiction, wouldn't it?" (Maria Victoria Marinetti, teacher inSpanish and translator, August 1999)
# Good software
"When software gets good enough for people to chat or talk on the webin real time in different languages, then we will see a whole new worldappear before us. Scientists, political activists, businesses and manymore groups will be able to communicate immediately without having togo through mediators or translators." (Tim McKenna, writer andphilosopher, October 2000)
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Unless specified otherwise, quotations are excerpts from NEFinterviews. Many thanks to all those who are quoted in this book, andwho kindly answered questions about multilingualism over the years.Most interviews are available online <http://www.etudes-francaises.net/entretiens/>. This book is also available in French,with a different text. Both versions are available online<http://www.etudes-francai