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*** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook. Details Below. ***
*** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. ***
Title: Multilingualism on the WebAuthor: Marie LebertRelease date: October 26, 2008 [eBook #27028]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines
Title: Multilingualism on the Web
Author: Marie Lebert
Author: Marie Lebert
Release date: October 26, 2008 [eBook #27028]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MULTILINGUALISM ON THE WEB ***
Produced by Al Haines
CEVEIL, Montreal, 1999 & NEF, University of Toronto, 2001
Copyright © 1999 Marie Lebert
Dated February 1999, this study is divided into four parts: Multilingualism, Language Resources, Translation Resources and Language-Related Research. It is based on many interviews. With many thanks to Laurie Chamberlain, who kindly edited this paper. This study is also available in French: Le multilinguisme sur le web. The original versions are available on the NEF, University of Toronto: http://www.etudes-francaises.net/entretiens/multi.htm
1. Introduction
2. Multilingualism
3. Language Resources
4. Translation Resources
5. Language-Related Research
6. Index of Websites
7. Index of Names
It is true that the Internet transcends limitations of time, distances and borders, but what about languages?
From the beginning, the main language of the Internet has been English, and it still is today, but the use of other languages is steadily increasing. Sooner or later, the distribution of languages on the Internet will correspond to the language distribution on the planet, and free translation software in all languages will be available for an instantaneous translation of any website. But there is still a lot to do before multilingualism can be really effective.
This study is divided into four parts: Multilingualism; Language Resources;Translation Resources; and Language-Related Research.
In the chapter about multilingualism, we will study the growth of non-English languages on the Internet. French will be taken as an example, and the efforts in the European Union relating to the diversity of languages will be examined.
In the chapter about language resources, we will give some examples of the language resources available on the Web — sites indexing language resources, language directories, language dictionaries and glossaries, textual databases, and terminological databases.
In the chapter relating to translation resources, we will explore the problems and perspectives linked to machine translation and computer-assisted translation.
In the last chapter on language-related research, we will present some projects relating to machine translation research, computational linguistics, language engineering, and internationalization and localization.
In August and December 1998, I sent an inquiry, based on three questions, to organizations and companies involved in languages on the Web. The three questions were:
a) How do you see multilingualism on the Internet?;
b) What did the use of the Internet bring to your professional life and/or the life of your company/organization; and
c) How do you see your professional future with the Internet or the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?
The answers received are included in this study. I express here my warmest thanks to all those who sent me their comments.
[As a translator-editor - working mainly for the International Labour Office (ILO), Geneva, Switzerland - I am fascinated by languages in general, so I wanted to know more about multilingualism on the Web. I found I had some time to look into the subject and I wrote this paper about the topics I was particularly interested in (first version in November 1998, updated in February 1999). I am also interested in the relationship between the print media and the Internet, and I wrote another paper about these topics too.]
[In this chapter:]
[2.1. The Web: First English, Then Multilingual / 2.2. A Non-English Language: The Example of French / 2.3. Diversity of Languages: The Situation in Europe]
2.1. The Web: First English, Then Multilingual
In the beginning, the Internet was nearly 100% English, which can be easily explained because it was created in the United States as a network set up by the Pentagon (in 1969) before spreading to US governmental agencies and to universities. After the creation of the World Wide Web in 1989-90 by Tim Berners-Lee at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), in Geneva, Switzerland, and the distribution of the first browser Mosaic (the ancestor of Netscape) from November 1993 onwards, the Web too began to spread — first in the US thanks to considerable investments made by the government, then around North America, and then to the rest of the world.
The fact that there are many more Internet surfers in the US and Canada than in any other country is due to different factors — these countries are among the leaders in the latest computing and communication technologies, and hardware and software, as well as local phone communications, are much cheaper there than in the rest of the world.
In Hugues Henry's article, La francophonie en quête d'identité sur le Web,published by the cybermagazine Multimédium, Jean-Pierre Cloutier, author ofChroniques de Cybérie, a weekly cybermagazine widely read in the French-speakingInternet community, explains:
"In Quebec I am spending about 120 hours per month on-line. My Internet access is $30 [Canadian]; if I add my all-inclusive phone bill which is about $40 (with various optional services), the total cost of my connection is $70 per month. I leave you to guess what the price would be in France, in Belgium or in Switzerland, where the local communications are billed by the minute, for the same number of hours on-line."
It follows that Belgian, French or Swiss surfers spend much less time on the Web than they would like, or choose to surf at night to cut somehow their expenses.
In 1997, Babel — a joint initiative from Alis Technologies and the Internet Society, ran the first major study of the actual distribution of languages on the Internet. The results are published in the Web Languages Hit Parade, dated June 1997, and the languages, listed in order of usage, are: English 82.3%, German 4.0%, Japanese 1.6%, French 1.5%, Spanish 1.1%, Swedish 1.1%, and Italian 1.0%.
In Web embraces language translation, an article published in ZDNN (ZD NetworkNews) of July 21, 1998, Martha L. Stone explained:
"This year, the number of new non-English websites is expected to outpace the growth of new sites in English, as the cyber world truly becomes a 'World Wide Web.' […] According to Global Reach, the fastest growing groups of Web newbies are non-English-speaking: Spanish, 22.4 percent; Japanese, 12.3 percent; German, 14 percent; and French, 10 percent. An estimated 55.7 million people access the Web whose native language is not English. […] Only 6 percent of the world population speaks English as a native language (16 percent speak Spanish), while about 80 percent of all web pages are in English."
According to Global Reach, 92% of the world does not speak English. As the Web quickly spreads worldwide, more and more operators of English-language sites which are concerned by the internationalization of the Web recognize that, although English may be the main international language for exchanges of all kinds, not everyone in the world reads English.
Since December 1997 any Internet surfer can use the AltaVista Translation service, which translates English web pages (up to three pages at the same time) into French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, and vice versa. The Internet surfer can also buy and use Web translation software. In both cases he will get a usable but imperfect machine-translated result which may be very helpful, but will never have the same quality as a translation prepared by a human translator with special knowledge of the subject and the contents of the site.
The increase in multilingual sites will make it possible to include more diverse languages on the Internet. And more free translation software will improve communication among everyone in the international Internet community.
To reach as large an audience as possible, the solution is to create bilingual, trilingual, multilingual sites. The website of the Belgian daily newspaper Le Soir gives a presentation of the newspaper in six languages: French, English, Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish. The French Club des poètes (Club of Poets), a French site dedicated to poetry, presents its site in English, Spanish and Portuguese. E-Mail-Planet, a free e-mail address provider, provides a menu in six languages (English, Finnish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish).
Robert Ware is the creator of OneLook Dictionaries, a fast finder for 2,058,544 words in 425 dictionaries in various fields: business, computer/Internet; medical; miscellaneous; religion; science; sports; technology; general; and slang. In his e-mail to me of September 2, 1998, he wrote:
"An interesting thing happened earlier in the history of the Internet and I think I learned something from it.
In 1994, I was working for a college and trying to install a software package on a particular type of computer. I located a person who was working on the same problem and we began exchanging e-mail. Suddenly, it hit me… the software was written only 30 miles away but I was getting help from a person half way around the world. Distance and geography no longer mattered!
OK, this is great! But what is it leading to? I am only able to communicate in English but, fortunately, the other person could use English as well as German which was his mother tongue. The Internet has removed one barrier (distance) but with that comes the barrier of language.
It seems that the Internet is moving people in two quite different directions at the same time. The Internet (initially based on English) is connecting people all around the world. This is further promoting a common language for people to use for communication. But it is also creating contact between people of different languages and creates a greater interest in multilingualism. A common language is great but in no way replaces this need.
So the Internet promotes both a common language AND multilingualism. The good news is that it helps provide solutions. The increased interest and need is creating incentives for people around the world to create improved language courses and other assistance and the Internet is providing fast and inexpensive opportunities to make them available."
2.2. A Non-English Language: The Example of French
Let us take French as an example of a non-English language.
Since 1996 the number of sites in French has increased significantly. There were about 20,000 sites in French in mid-1997, and more of a third of them were from Quebec. Since the beginning of 1998 we can see a larger number of new French websites, particularly in the field of electronic commerce. "For two years I have being waiting for France to wake up. Today I'll not complain about it," Louise Beaudouin, the Minister of Culture and Communications in Quebec, declared on February 10, 1998, when interviewed by the daily cybermagazine Multimédium.
Until early 1998, Quebec and its 6 million inhabitants had more websites than France did with its 60 million inhabitants. In her interview, Louise Beaudouin gave two reasons for France's lagging behind Quebec — the first is the high cost of phone service, and the second is the widespread use of the Minitel for commercial transactions.
Developed 15 years ago by France Télécom, the French state telephone company, the Minitel is a terminal which gives access to the French videotex network, as well as facilitating electronic commerce transactions. As this very handy tool has been in use for years, it slowed down the expansion of French electronic commerce on the Internet. Little by little, many of the French companies or organizations with Minitel servers are creating websites, which are cheaper to consult, easier to use because of hypertext links, and more pleasing to the eye because of colors, graphics and multimedia tools.
French is not only spoken in France, Quebec, and parts of Belgium and Switzerland, it is the official language of 49 states (particularly in Africa) and is spoken worldwide by 500 million people. Created in 1970 with 21 French-speaking states, the Agence de la francophonie (Agency of Francophone Countries) counts 47 members today. Its goal is to be an instrument of multilateral cooperation to create a community representing the French-speaking countries at the international level.
Following the decisions of the Heads of States and Governments of French-speaking Countries during their meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, in November 1997, the Fonds francophone des inforoutes (Francophone Fund for Information Highways) was established on June 3, 1998. Thirteen Francophone states and governments participated: the Belgian-French Community, Benin, Cameroon, Canada, Canada-New Brunswick, Canada-Quebec, Côte d'Ivoire, France, Gabon, Lebanon, Monaco, Senegal, and Switzerland.
This Fund's mission had been outlined six months earlier, according to several directives given by the Conférence des ministres chargés des inforoutes (Conference of Ministers in Charge of the Information Highways) held in Montreal, Quebec, in May 1997. It supported: democratization of the access to information highways; development of education, training and research; reinforcement of content creation and circulation; promotion of economic and social development; setting up of a Francophone awareness service; awareness-raising of young people, producers and investors; setting up of a concerted Francophone presence within the international authorities in charge of the development of information highways. The Fund's activities are particularly aimed at financing multilateral projects which would strengthen partnerships between North and South.
French is not only the language of 49 countries and 500 million inhabitants in the world, it is also the second international language used in international organizations. Despite the real and alleged pressure of the English-speaking community, French-speaking people insist on their language being given a fair position in the world, and receiving the same consideration given to other main languages of communication, such as English, Arabic, Chinese or Spanish. Just as for any other non-English language-based culture, the French wish to stand up for their own language as well as for multilingualism and the diversity of people and culture.
At present it is important for any language to be represented through websites in its own language, with the possibility for Internet surfers to study it in a dynamic way through self-taught programs, language dictionaries, or linguistic databases. For example, in France, the Institut national de la langue française (INaLF) (National Institute of the French Language) created its site in December 1997 to present its research programs on the French language, particularly its lexicon. The INaLF's constantly expanded and renewed data, processed by specific and original computing systems, deal with all the aspects of the French language: literary discourse (14th-20th centuries), standard language (written and spoken), scientific and technical language (terminologies), and regional languages.
In her e-mail response of June 8, 1998, Christiane Jadelot, an engineer atINaLF-Nancy, France, explained:
"At the request of Robert Martin, the Head of INaLF, our first pages were posted on the Internet by mid-1996. I participated in the creation of these web pages with tools that cannot be compared to the ones we have nowadays. I was working with tools on UNIX, which were not very easy to use. At this time, we had little experience in this field, and the pages were very wordy. But the managing team was thinking it was urgent for us to be known through the Internet, a tool many enterprises were already using to promote their products. As we are a Department of Research and Services (Unité de recherche et de service), we have to find clients for our computer products, the best known being the textual database FRANTEXT. I think FRANTEXT was already on the Internet [since early 1995], and there was also a prototype of the volume 14 of the TLF [Trésor de la langue française (Treasure of the French Language), by Jean Nicot, 1606]. Therefore it was necessary for INaLF activities to be known by this means. It corresponded to a general need."
Every non-English language community is working for its language to be represented on the Web and for the international Internet to be multilingual. As an example, a non-profit organization created by the Government of Quebec, the Centre d'expertise et de veille Inforoutes et Langues (CEVEIL) (Centre of Expertise and Awareness for Information Highways and Languages) is setting up, in a more specifically French-oriented approach, an expertise network and some awareness-raising activities on the language problems of information highways.
Guy Bertrand, scientific director of CEVEIL, and Cynthia Delisle, consultant, answered my questions in their e-mail of August 23, 1998.
ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Web?"
CEVEIL: "Multilingualism on the Internet is the logical and natural consequence of the diversity of human populations. Because the Web has first been developed and used in the United States, it is not really surprising that this medium began by being essentially Anglophone (and still is at present). However this situation is beginning to change and this movement will go on expanding, both because most of the new network users will not have English as a mother tongue and because the [non-English] communities already present on the Web will no longer accept the hegemony of the English language and will want to use the Internet in their own language, at least partially.
We can plan that, in several years, we'll have a situation similar to the one in publishing regarding the representation of different languages. This means than only a small number of languages will be in use (compared to the several thousands which exist). In this perspective, we believe that the Web — among other parties — should seek to further support minority cultures and languages, particularly for dispersed communities.
Finally, the arrival on the Internet of languages other than English, while requiring true readjustments and providing undeniable enrichment, points out the need for linguistic processing tools capable of effectively managing this situation. These will emerge as the result of research studies and awareness activities in areas such as machine translation, standardization, information location, automatic condensation (summaries), etc."
ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring to the life of CEVEIL?"
CEVEIL: "Let us first mention that the existence of the Web is one of the grounds of existence of CEVEIL, as we concentrate our activities mainly around the set of themes of the language use and processing on the Internet.
Moreover the Web is our main field for gathering information on the set of themes we are concerned with. Among others, we regularly and frequently watch the sites circulating daily and/or weekly news. At this level, we can say without hesitation that we use the Internet more than the other available written resources to carry out our activities.
Otherwise we prolifically use electronic mail to maintain relations with our contributors in order to obtain information and realize some projects. CEVEIL is a 'network structure' which would survive with difficulty without the Internet to connect together all the people who are implicated.
Finally it is useful to point out that the Web is also our most important tool for distributing our products to our target clients: sending of electronic news reports to our subscribers, creation of an electronic periodical, information and document distribution via our website, etc."
ML: "How does CEVEIL see the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?"
CEVEIL: "The Internet is here to stay. The arrival of languages other than English to this medium also is irreversible. Therefore it is necessary to take these new facts into consideration from an economic, social, political, cultural, etc., point of view. Sectors such as advertising, vocational training, work in groups or within networks and knowledge management, will consequently have to evolve. As we mentioned above, it brings us back to the necessary development of really effective technologies and tools which will further exchanges in a really multilingual global village…"
2.3. Diversity of Languages: The Situation in Europe
Henri Slettenhaar, professor at the Webster University, Geneva, Switzerland, is a trilingual European. He is Dutch, he teaches computer science in English, and he speaks French too because he lives in France. He answered my questions in his e-mail of December 21, 1998.
ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Internet?"
HS: "I see multilingualism as a very important issue. Local communities which are on the Web should use the local language first and foremost for their information. If they want to be able to present their information to the world community as well, their information should be in English as well. I see a real need for bilingual websites."
ML: "How do you see the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?"
HS: "As far as languages are concerned, I am delighted that there are so many offerings in the original languages now. I much prefer to read the original with difficulty than to get a bad translation."
According to Global Reach, only 15% of Europe's half a billion population speaksEnglish as a first language, and only 28% speaks English at all. A recent studyshowed that only 32% of Web surfers on the European continent consult the Web inEnglish.
Founder of Euro-Marketing Associates (including Global Reach), Bill Dunlap, who champions European e-commerce among his fellow American compatriates, explained in his e-mail of December 12, 1998 that, contrary to North America, "in Europe […], the countries are small enough so that an international perspective has been necessary for centuries."
There are many European organizations dealing with multilingualism, such as the European Language Resources Association (ELRA), the European Network in Language and Speech (ELSNET) and the Multilingual Information Society (MLIS) Programme of the European Union.
The European Language Resources Association (ELRA) was established as a non-profit organization in Luxembourg in February 1995. Its overall goal is to provide a centralized organization for the validation, management, and distribution of speech, text, and terminology resources and tools, and to promote their use within the European telematics RTD (research and technological development) community. Its website is bilingual English-French.
The European Network in Language and Speech (ELSNET) has over a hundred European academic and industrial institutions as members. The long-term technological goal which unites the participants of ELSNET is to build multilingual speech and NL (natural language) systems with unrestricted coverage of both spoken and written language.
In his e-mail of September 23, 1998, Steven Krauwer, ELSNET coordinator, explained:
"— as a European citizen I think that multilingualism on the Web is absolutely essential, as in the long run I don't think that it is a healthy situation when only those who have a reasonable command of English can fully exploit the benefits of the Web;
— as a researcher (specialized in machine translation) I see multilingualism as a major challenge: how can we ensure that all information on the Web is accessible to everybody, irrespective of language differences.
[The Internet] is my main instrument to communicate with others, and it is my main source of information. […] I am sure I will spend the rest of my professional life trying to use IT to take away or at least lower the language barriers."
The Multilingual Information Society (MLIS) Programme of the European Union promotes the linguistic diversity of the EU in the information society. It intends to raise awareness of and stimulate provision of multilingual services, tolerable conditions for the language industries, reduced cost of information transfer among languages and contribute to the promotion of linguistic diversity. The home page of the website is in English, and documents are issues in many of all 11 EU official languages: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.
Linguistic pluralism and diversity are everybody's business, as explained in a petition launched by the European Committee for the Respect of Cultures and Languages in Europe (ECRCLE) "for a humanist and multilingual Europe, rich of its cultural diversity".
"Linguistic pluralism and diversity are not obstacles to the free circulation of men, ideas, goods and services, as would like to suggest some objective allies, consciously or not, of the dominant language and culture. Indeed, standardization and hegemony are the obstacles to the free blossoming of individuals, societies and the information economy, the main source of tomorrow's jobs. On the contrary, the respect for languages is the last hope for Europe to get closer to the citizens, an objective always claimed and almost never put into practice. The Union must therefore give up privileging the language of one group."
The full text of the petition is available on the Web in the 11 European official languages of the European Union. The ECRCLE also asks the revisors of the Treaty of the European Union to include in the text of the treaty the respect of national cultures and languages. The proposals are concrete. In particular, the petition asks the governments in each country to "teach the youth at least two, and preferably three foreign European languages; encourage the national audiovisual and musical industries; and favour the diffusion of European works."
In Language Futures Europe, Paul Treanor collects links on language policy, multilingualism, global language structures, and the dominance of English. The site starts with a comment on the structures of language. It offers texts and essays, sections on EU policy, national policies, and research sites, and links on the emerging "monolingual movement" in the United States.
In his e-mail of August 18, 1998, Paul Treanor sent his comments on the questions I sent him:
"First, you speak of the Web in the singular. As you may have read, I think 'THE WEB' is a political, not a technological concept. A civilization is possible with extremely advanced computers, but no interconnection. The idea that there should be ONE WEB is derived from the liberal tradition of the single open, preferably global market.
I already suggested that the Internet should simply be broken up, and that Europe should cut the links with the US, and build a systematically incompatible net for Europe. As soon as you imagine the possibility of multiple nets, the language issues you list in your study are often irrelevant. Remember that 15 years ago, everyone thought that there would be one global TV station, CNN. Now there are French, German, Spanish global TV channels. So the answer to your question is that the 'one web' will split up anyway: probably into these 4 components:
a) an internal US/Canadian anglophone net, with many of the original characteristics;
b) separate national nets, with limited outside links;
c) a new global net specifically to link the nets of category 2;
d) possibly a specific EU net.
As you see, this structure parallels the existing geopolitical structure. All telecommunications infrastructure has followed similar patterns.
I think that it is not possible to approach the Web in the neutral apolitical way suggested by your study. Current EU policy pretends to be neutral in this way, but in fact is supporting the growth of English as a contact-language in EU communications policy."
[In this chapter:]
[3.1. Sites Indexing Language Resources / 3.2. Language Directories / 3.3. Dictionaries and Glossaries / 3.4. Textual Databases / 3.5. Terminological Databases]
3.1. Sites Indexing Language Resources
Prepared by the Telematics for Libraries Programme of the European Union, Multilingual Tools and Services gives a series of links to dictionaries, multilingual support, projects, search engines by language, terminology data banks, thesauri, and translation systems.
Created by Tyler Chambers in May 1994, The Human-Languages Page is a comprehensive catalog of 1,800 language-related Internet resources in more than 100 different languages. The subject listings are: languages and literature; schools and institutions; linguistics resources; products and services; organizations; jobs and internships. The category listings are: dictionaries and language lessons.
Tyler Chambers' other main language-related project is the Internet DictionaryProject. As explained on the website:
"The Internet Dictionary Project's goal is to create royalty-free translating dictionaries through the help of the Internet's citizens. This site allows individuals from all over the world to visit and assist in the translation of English words into other languages. The resulting lists of English words and their translated counterparts are then made available through this site to anyone, with no restrictions on their use. […]
The Internet Dictionary Project began in 1995 in an effort to provide a noticeably lacking resource to the Internet community and to computing in general — free translating dictionaries. Not only is it helpful to the on-line community to have access to dictionary searches at their fingertips via the World Wide Web, it also sponsors the growth of computer software which can benefit from such dictionaries — from translating programs to spelling-checkers to language-education guides and more. By facilitating the creation of these dictionaries on-line by thousands of anonymous volunteers all over the Internet, and by providing the results free-of-charge to anyone, the Internet Dictionary Project hopes to leave its mark on the Internet and to inspire others to create projects which will benefit more than a corporation's gross income."
Tyler Chambers answered my questions in his e-mail of 14 September 1998.
ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Web?"
TC: "Multilingualism on the Web was inevitable even before the medium 'took off', so to speak. 1994 was the year I was really introduced to the Web, which was a little while after its christening but long before it was mainstream. That was also the year I began my first multilingual Web project, and there was already a significant number of language-related resources on-line. This was back before Netscape even existed — Mosaic was almost the only Web browser, and web pages were little more than hyperlinked text documents. As browsers and users mature, I don't think there will be any currently spoken language that won't have a niche on the Web, from Native American languages to Middle Eastern dialects, as well as a plethora of 'dead' languages that will have a chance to find a new audience with scholars and others alike on-line. To my knowledge, there are very few language types which are not currently on-line: browsers currently have the capability to display Roman characters, Asian languages, the Cyrillic alphabet, Greek, Turkish, and more. Accent Software has a product called 'Internet with an Accent' which claims to be able to display over 30 different language encodings. If there are currently any barriers to any particular language being on the Web, they won't last long."
ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring to your professional life?"
TC: "My professional life is currently completely separate from my Internet life. Professionally, I'm a computer programmer/techie — I find it challenging and it pays the bills. On-line, my work has been with making language information available to more people through a couple of my Web-based projects. While I'm not multilingual, nor even bilingual, myself, I see an importance to language and multilingualism that I see in very few other areas. The Internet has allowed me to reach millions of people and help them find what they're looking for, something I'm glad to do. It has also made me somewhat of a celebrity, or at least a familiar name in certain circles — I just found out that one of my Web projects had a short mention in Time Magazine's Asia and International issues. Overall, I think that the Web has been great for language awareness and cultural issues — where else can you randomly browse for 20 minutes and run across three or more different languages with information you might potentially want to know? Communications mediums make the world smaller by bringing people closer together; I think that the Web is the first (of mail, telegraph, telephone, radio, TV) to really cross national and cultural borders for the average person. Israel isn't thousands of miles away anymore, it's a few clicks away — our world may now be small enough to fit inside a computer screen."
ML: "How do you see the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?"
TC: "As I've said before, I think that the future of the Internet is even more multilingualism and cross-cultural exploration and understanding than we've already seen. But the Internet will only be the medium by which this information is carried; like the paper on which a book is written, the Internet itself adds very little to the content of information, but adds tremendously to its value in its ability to communicate that information. To say that the Internet is spurring multilingualism is a bit of a misconception, in my opinion — it is communication that is spurring multilingualism and cross-cultural exchange, the Internet is only the latest mode of communication which has made its way down to the (more-or-less) common person. The Internet has a long way to go before being ubiquitous around the world, but it, or some related progeny, likely will. Language will become even more important than it already is when the entire planet can communicate with everyone else (via the Web, chat, games, e-mail, and whatever future applications haven't even been invented yet), but I don't know if this will lead to stronger language ties, or a consolidation of languages until only a few, or even just one remain. One thing I think is certain is that the Internet will forever be a record of our diversity, including language diversity, even if that diversity fades away. And that's one of the things I love about the Internet — it's a global model of the saying 'it's not really gone as long as someone remembers it'. And people do remember."
Since its inception in 1989, the CTI (Computer in Teaching Initiative) Centre for Modern Languages has been based in the Language Institute at the University of Hull, United Kingdom, and aims to promote and encourage the use of computers in language learning and teaching. The Centre provides information on how computer assisted language learning (CALL) can be effectively integrated into existing courses and offers support for language lecturers who are using, or who wish to use, computers in their teaching.
June Thompson, Manager of the Centre, answered my questions in his e-mail ofDecember 14, 1998.
ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Internet?"
JT: "The Internet has the potential to increase the use of foreign languages, and our organisation certainly opposed any trend towards the dominance of English as the language of the Internet. An interesting paper on this topic was delivered by Madanmohan Rao at the WorldCALL conference in Melbourne, July 1998." [See details of the forthcoming conference book]
ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring to the life of your organization?"
JT: "The use of the Internet has brought an enormous new dimension to our work of supporting language teachers in their use of technology in teaching."
ML: "How do you see the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?"
JT: "I suspect that for some time to come, the use of Internet-related activities for languages will continue to develop alongside other technology-related activities (e.g. use of CD-ROMs - not all institutions have enough networked hardware). In the future I can envisage use of Internet playing a much larger part, but only if such activities are pedagogy-driven. Our organisation is closely associated with the WELL project [Web Enhanced Language Learning] which devotes itself to these issues."
Hosted by the CTI Centre for Modern Languages and the University of Hull (United Kingdom), EUROCALL is the European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning. This association of language teaching professionals from Europe and worldwide aims to: promote the use of foreign languages within Europe; provide a European focus for all aspects of the use of technology for language learning; enhance the quality, dissemination and efficiency of CALL (computer assisted language learning) materials; and support Special Interest Groups (SIGs): CAPITAL (Computer Assisted Pronunciation Investigation Teaching and Learning), a group of researchers and practitioners interested in using the computers in the domain of pronunciation in the widest sense of the word, and WELL (Web Enhanced Language Learning), which will provide access to high-quality Web resources in 12 languages, selected and described by subject experts, plus information and examples on how to use them for teaching and learning.
Internet Resources for Language Teachers and Learners offers several categories of links: general languages resources (centres and departments, dictionaries and grammars; discussion lists; distance language learning; fonts; journals; linguistics; lists and indexes; miscellaneous; newspapers and periodicals; organizations; resource sites; software; translation and interpreting); language-specific resources; multilingual language sites; search engines and indexes; and commercial language sites (audiovisual, language schools, resources and directories, software).
Maintained by the Institute of Phonetic Sciences, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Speech on the Web is an extensive list of links organized in various sections: congresses, meetings, and workshops; links and lists; phonetics and speech; natural language processing, cognitive science, and AI (artificial intelligence); computational linguistics; dictionaries; electronic newsletters, journals and publications.
Travlang is a site dedicated both to travel and languages. Created by Michael C. Martin in 1994 on the site of his university when he was a student in physics, Foreign Languages for Travelers, included in Travlang in 1995, gives the possibility to learn 60 different languages on the Web. Translating Dictionaries gives access to free dictionaries in various languages (Afrikaans, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Spanish). Maintained by its founder, who is now a researcher in experimental physics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, the site offers numerous links to language dictionaries, translation services, language schools, multilingual bookstores, etc.
Michael C. Martin answered my questions in his e-mail of August 25, 1998.
ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Web?"
MCM: "I think the Web is an ideal place to bring different cultures and people together, and that includes being multilingual. Our Travlang site is so popular because of this, and people desire to feel in touch with other parts of the world."
ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring to your professional life?"
MCM: "Well, certainly we've made a little business of it! The Internet is really a great tool for communicating with people you wouldn't have the opportunity to interact with otherwise. I truly enjoy the global collaboration that has made our Foreign Languages for Travelers pages possible."
ML: "How do you see the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?"
MCM: "I think computerized full-text translations will become more common, enabling a lot of basic communications with even more people. This will also help bring the Internet more completely to the non-English speaking world."
The LINGUIST List is the component of the WWW Virtual Library for linguistics. It gives an extensive series of links on linguistic resources: the profession (conferences, linguistic associations, programs, etc.); research and research support (papers, dissertation abstracts, projects, bibliographies, topics, texts); publications; pedagogy; language resources (languages, language families, dictionaries, regional information); and computer support (fonts and software).
Helen Dry, moderator of the LINGUIST List, explained in her e-mail of August 18, 1998:
"The LINGUIST List, which I moderate, has a policy of posting in any language, since it's a list for linguists. However, we discourage posting the same message in several languages, simply because of the burden extra messages put on our editorial staff. (We are not a bounce-back list, but a moderated one. So each message is organized into an issue with like messages by our student editors before it is posted.) Our experience has been that almost everyone chooses to post in English. But we do link to a translation facility that will present our pages in any of 5 languages; so a subscriber need not read LINGUIST in English unless s/he wishes to. We also try to have at least one student editor who is genuinely multilingual, so that readers can correspond with us in languages other than English."
Maintained by the Yamada Language Center of the University of Oregon, the Yamada WWW Language Guides is a directory of language resources by geographic family and alphabetic family. It covers organizations, teaching institutes, curriculum materials, cultural references, and WWW links.
Language today is a new magazine for people working in applied languages: translators, interpreters, terminologists, lexicographers and technical writers. It is a collaborative project between Logos, who provide the website, and Praetorius, the UK language consultancy which keeps itself constantly informed about developments in applied languages. The site gives links to translators associations, language schools, and dictionaries.
Geoffrey Kingscott, managing director of Praetorius, answered my questions in his e-mail of September 4, 1998.
ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Web?"
GK: "Because the salient characteristics of the Web are the multiplicity of site generators and the cheapness of message generation, as the Web matures it will in fact promote multilingualism. The fact that the Web originated in the USA means that it is still predominantly in English but this is only a temporary phenomenon. If I may explain this further, when we relied on the print and audiovisual (film, television, radio, video, cassettes) media, we had to depend on the information or entertainment we wanted to receive being brought to us by agents (publishers, television and radio stations, cassette and video producers) who have to subsist in a commercial world or — as in the case of public service broadcasting — under severe budgetary restraints. That means that the size of the customer-base is all-important, and determines the degree to which languages other than the ubiquitous English can be accommodated. These constraints disappear with the Web. To give only a minor example from our own experience, we publish the print version of Language Today only in English, the common denominator of our readers. When we use an article which was originally in a language other than English, or report an interview which was conducted in a language other than English, we translate into English and publish only the English version. This is because the number of pages we can print is constrained, governed by our customer-base (advertisers and subscribers). But for our Web edition we also give the original version."
ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring to your company?"
GK: "The Internet has made comparatively little difference to our company. It is an additional medium rather than one which will replace all others."
ML: "How do you see the future with the Internet?"
GK: "We will continue to have a company website, and to publish a version of the magazine on the Web, but it will remain only one factor in our work. We do use the Internet as a source of information which we then distill for our readers, who would otherwise be faced with the biggest problem of the Web — undiscriminating floods of information."
3.2. Language Directories
The Ethnologue is the electronic version of The Ethnologue, 13th ed., (editor: Barbara F. Grimes, consulting editors: Richard S. Pittman and Joseph E. Grimes), published in 1996 by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas, Texas. This catalogue of more than 6,700 languages spoken in 228 countries is accessible through two search tools: The Ethnologue Name Index, which lists language names, dialect names, and alternate names, and The Ethnologue Language Family Index, which organizes languages according to language families.
Barbara F. Grimes, editor of The Ethnologue, wrote in her e-mail of August 18, 1998:
"Multilingual web pages are more widely useful, but much more costly to maintain. We have had requests for The Ethnologue in a few other languages, but we do not have the personnel or funds to do the translation or maintenance, since it is constantly being updated.
We have found the Internet to be useful, convenient, and supplementary to our work. Our main use of it is for e-mail.
It is a convenient means of making information more widely available to a wider audience than the printed Ethnologue provides.
On the other hand, many people in the audience we wish to reach do not have access to computers, so in some ways the Ethnologue on Internet reaches a limited audience who own computers. I am particularly thinking of people in the so-called 'third world'."
Created in December 1995 by Yoshi Mikami of Asia Info Network, The Languages of the World by Computers and the Internet (commonly called Logos Home Page or Kotoba Home Page) gives, for each language, its brief history, features, writing system, and character set and keyboard for computers and the Internet processing. In his e-mail of December 17, 1998, Yoshi Mikami wrote:
"My native tongue is Japanese. Because I had my graduate education in the US and worked in the computer business, I became bilingual Japanese/American English. I was always interested in different languages and cultures, so I learned some Russian, French and Chinese along the way. In late 1995, I created on the Web The Languages of the World by Computers and the Internet and tried to summarize there the brief history, linguistic and phonetic features, writing system and computer processing for each of the six major languages of the world, in English and Japanese. As I gained more experience, I invited my two associates to write a book on viewing, understanding and creating the multilingual web pages, which was published in August, 1997, as "The Multilingual Web Guide" (see its support page) in the Japanese edition, the world's first book on such a subject.
Thousands of years ago, in Egypt, China and elsewhere, people were more conscious about communicating their laws and thoughts not in just one language, but in different languages. In our modern world, each nation state has adopted more or less one language for its own use. I see in the future of the Internet a greater use of different languages and multilingual pages, not a simple gravitation to American English, and a more creative use of multilingual computer translation. Ninety nine percent of the Webs created in Japan are written in Japanese!"
Maintained on the website of the College Sabhal Mór Ostaig, Island of Skye, Scotland, by Caoimhín P. Ó Donnaíle, European Minority Languages is a list of minority languages by alphabetic order and by language family. The site also gives links to other sites dealing with the same subject worldwide.
Caoimhín P. Ó Donnaíle wrote in her e-mail of August 18, 1998:
"— The Internet has contributed and will contribute to the wildfire spread ofEnglish as a world language.
— The Internet can greatly help minority languages, but this will not happen by itself. It will only happen if people want to maintain the language as an aim in itself.
— The Web is very useful for delivering language lessons, and there is a big demand for this.
— The Unicode (ISO 10646) character set standard is very important and will greatly assist in making the Internet more multilingual."
3.3. Dictionaries and Glossaries
There are more and more on-line dictionaries. Let us give three examples(English, French and multilingual).
In Merriam-Webster Online: the Language Center, a main publisher of English dictionaries gives free access to a collection of on-line resources. The goal is to help track down definitions, spellings, pronunciations, synonyms, vocabulary exercises, and other key facts about words and language. The main on-line resources are: WWWebster Dictionary, WWebster Thesaurus, Webster's Third (a lexical landmark), Guide to International Business Communications, Vocabulary Builder (with interactive vocabulary quizzes), and the Barnhart Dictionary Companion (hot new words).
The Dictionnaire francophone en ligne is the web version of the Dictionnaire universel francophone, published by Hachette, a major French publisher, and the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUPELF-UREF) (University Agency for Francophony), which presents the standard French and the French words and expressions used in the five continents.
The Logos Dictionary is a multilingual dictionary with 8 million entry words in all languages. Logos, an international translation company based in Modena, Italy, gives free access to the linguistic tools used by its translators: 200 translators in its headquarters and 2,500 translators on-line all over the world, who process around 200 texts per day. Apart from the Logos Dictionary, these tools include: the Wordtheque, a word-by-word multilingual library with a massive database (325 million words) containing multilingual novels, technical literature and translated texts; Linguistic Resources, a database of 536 glossaries; and the Universal Conjugator, a database for conjugation of verbs in 17 languages.
In Les mots pour le dire, an article of the French daily newspaper Le Monde ofDecember 7, 1997, Annie Kahn wrote:
"The Logos site is much more than a mere dictionary or a collection of links to other on-line dictionaries. A cornerstone of the system is the document search software, which processes a corpus of literary texts available free of charge on the Web. If you search for the definition or the translation of a word ('didactique', for example), you get not only the answer sought, but also a quote from one of the literary works containing the word (in our case, an essay by Voltaire). All it takes is a click on the mouse to access the whole text or even to order the book, thanks to a partnership agreement with Amazon.com, the well-known on-line book shop. Foreign translations are also available. If however no text containing the required word is found, the system acts as a search engine, sending the user to other websites concerning the term in question. In the case of certain words, you can even hear the pronunciation. If there is no translation currently available, the system calls on the public to contribute. Everyone can make their own suggestion, after which Logos translators and the company verify the translations forwarded."
In the same article, Rodrigo Vergara, the Head of Logos, explained:
"We wanted all our translators to have access to the same translation tools. So we made them available on the Internet, and while we were at it we decided to make the site open to the public. This made us extremely popular, and also gave us a lot of exposure. In fact the operation attracted a great number of customers, and also allowed us to widen our network of translators, thanks to the contacts made in the wake of this initiative."
The dictionary directories are invaluable tools for linguists, such asDictionnaires électroniques (Electronic Dictionaries), OneLook Dictionaries andA Web of Online Dictionaries.
Dictionnaires électroniques (Electronic Dictionaries) is an extensive list of electronic dictionaries prepared by the Section française des Services linguistiques centraux (SLC-f) (French Section of the Central Linguistic Services) of the Swiss Federal Administration, and classified into five main sections: abbreviations and acronyms; monolingual dictionaries; bilingual dictionaries; multilingual dictionaries; and geographical information. The search of a dictionary is also possible by key-words.
Marcel Grangier, head of this section, answered my questions in his e-mail ofJanuary 14, 1999.
ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Internet?"
MG: "Multilingualism on the Internet can be seen as a happy and above all irreversible inevitability. In this perspective we have to make fun of the wet blankets who only speak to complain about the supremacy of English. This supremacy is not wrong in itself, inasmuch as it is the result of mainly statistical facts (more PCs per inhabitant, more English-speaking people, etc.). The counter-attack is not to 'fight against English' and even less to whine about it, but to increase sites in other languages. As a translation service, we also recommend the multilingualism of websites."
ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring to your professional life?"
MG: "To work without the Internet is simply impossible now — as well as all the tools used (e-mail, electronic press, services for translators), Internet is for us an essential and inexhaustible source of information in what I would call the 'non-structured sector' of the Web. For example, when the answer to a translation problem can't be found in websites presenting information in an organized way, in most cases search engines allow us to find the missing link somewhere on the network."
ML: "How do you see the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?"
MG: "The increase in the number of languages on the Internet is inevitable, and can only be a benefit for multicultural exchanges. For the exchanges to happen in an optimal environment, it is still necesssary to develop tools which will improve compatibility — the complete management of diacritics is only one example of what can be done."
Provided as a free service since April 1996 by Study Technologies, Englewood, Colorado, OneLook Dictionaries, by Robert Ware, is the fastest finder for more than 2 million words in 425 dictionaries in various fields: business, computer/Internet, medical, miscellaneous, religion, science, sports, technology, general, and slang.
In his e-mail of September 2, 1998, Robert Ware explained:
"On the personal side, I was almost entirely in contact with people who spoke one language and did not have much incentive to expand language abilities. Being in contact with the entire world has a way of changing that. And changing it for the better! […] I have been slow to start including non-English dictionaries (partly because I am monolingual). But you will now find a few included."
A Web of Online Dictionaries, by Robert Beard, is an index of more than 800 on-line dictionaries in 150 languages, and other tools: multilingual dictionaries; specialized English dictionaries; thesauri and other vocabulary aids; language identifiers and guessers; an index of dictionary indices; a Web of on-line grammars; and a Web of linguistic fun (materials about linguistics for non-specialists).
Robert Beard answered my questions in his e-mail of September 1, 1998.
ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Web?"
RB: "There was an initial fear that the Web posed a threat to multilingualism on the Web, since HTML and other programming languages are based on English and since there are simply more websites in English than any other language. However, my websites indicate that multilingualism is very much alive and the Web may, in fact, serve as a vehicle for preserving many endangered languages. I now have links to dictionaries in 150 languages and grammars of 65 languages. Moreover, the new attention paid by browser developers to the different languages of the world will encourage even more websites in different languages."
ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring to your professional life?"
RB: "As a language teacher, the Web represents a plethora of new resources produced by the target culture, new tools for delivering lessons (interactive Java and Shockwave exercises) and testing, which are available to students any time they have the time or interest — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is also an almost limitless publication outlet for my colleagues and I, not to mention my institution."
ML: "How do you see the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?"
RB: "Ultimately all course materials, including lecture notes, exercises, moot and credit testing, grading, and interactive exercises far more effective in conveying concepts that we have not even dreamed of yet. The Web will be an encyclopedia of the world by the world for the world. There will be no information or knowledge that anyone needs that will not be available. The major hindrance to international and interpersonal understanding, personal and institutional enhancement, will be removed. It would take a wilder imagination than mine to predict the effect of this development on the nature of humankind."
Initiated by the WorldWide Language Institute, NetGlos (The Multilingual Glossary of Internet Terminology) is currently being compiled from 1995 as a voluntary, collaborative project by a number of translators and other professionals. Versions for the following languages are being prepared: Chinese, Croatian, English, Dutch/Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Maori, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Brian King, director of the WorldWide Language Institute, answered my questions in his e-mail of September 15, 1998.
ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Web?"
BL: "Although English is still the most important language used on the Web, and the Internet in general, I believe that multilingualism is an inevitable part of the future direction of cyberspace.
Here are some of the important developments that I see as making a multilingualWeb become a reality:
a) Popularization of information technology
Computer technology has traditionally been the sole domain of a 'techie' elite, fluent in both complex programming languages and in English — the universal language of science and technology. Computers were never designed to handle writing systems that couldn't be translated into ASCII. There wasn't much room for anything other than the 26 letters of the English alphabet in a coding system that originally couldn't even recognize acute accents and umlauts — not to mention nonalphabetic systems like Chinese.
But tradition has been turned upside down. Technology has been popularized. GUIs (graphical user interfaces) like Windows and Macintosh have hastened the process (and indeed it's no secret that it was Microsoft's marketing strategy to use their operating system to make computers easy to use for the average person). These days this ease of use has spread beyond the PC to the virtual, networked space of the Internet, so that now nonprogrammers can even insert Java applets into their webpages without understanding a single line of code.
b) Competition for a chunk of the 'global market' by major industry players
An extension of (local) popularization is the export of information technology around the world. Popularization has now occurred on a global scale and English is no longer necessarily the lingua franca of the user. Perhaps there is no true lingua franca, but only the individual languages of the users. One thing is certain — it is no longer necessary to understand English to use a computer, nor it is necessary to have a degree in computer science.
A pull from non-English-speaking computer users and a push from technology companies competing for global markets has made localization a fast growing area in software and hardware development. This development has not been as fast as it could have been. The first step was for ASCII to become Extended ASCII. This meant that computers could begin to start recognizing the accents and symbols used in variants of the English alphabet — mostly used by European languages. But only one language could be displayed on a page at a time.
c) Technological developments
The most recent development is Unicode. Although still evolving and only just being incorporated into the latest software, this new coding system translates each character into 16 bytes. Whereas 8 byte Extended ASCII could only handle a maximum of 256 characters, Unicode can handle over 65,000 unique characters and therefore potentially accommodate all of the world's writing systems on the computer.
So now the tools are more or less in place. They are still not perfect, but at last we can at least surf the Web in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and numerous other languages that don't use the Western alphabet. As the Internet spreads to parts of the world where English is rarely used — such as China, for example, it is natural that Chinese, and not English, will be the preferred choice for interacting with it. For the majority of the users in China, their mother tongue will be the only choice.
There is a change-over period, of course. Much of the technical terminology on the Web is still not translated into other languages. And as we found with our Multilingual Glossary of Internet Terminology — known as NetGlos — the translation of these terms is not always a simple process. Before a new term becomes accepted as the 'correct' one, there is a period of instability where a number of competing candidates are used. Often an English loanword becomes the starting point — and in many cases the endpoint. But eventually a winner emerges that becomes codified into published technical dictionaries as well as the everyday interactions of the nontechnical user. The latest version of NetGlos is the Russian one and it should be available in a couple of weeks or so [end of September 1998]. It will no doubt be an excellent example of the ongoing, dynamic process of 'Russification' of Web terminology.
d) Linguistic democracy
Whereas 'mother-tongue education' was deemed a human right for every child in the world by a UNESCO report in the early '50s, 'mother-tongue surfing' may very well be the Information Age equivalent. If the Internet is to truly become the Global Network that it is promoted as being, then all users, regardless of language background, should have access to it. To keep the Internet as the preserve of those who, by historical accident, practical necessity, or political privilege, happen to know English, is unfair to those who don't.
e) Electronic commerce
Although a multilingual Web may be desirable on moral and ethical grounds, such high ideals are not enough to make it other than a reality on a small-scale. As well as the appropriate technology being available so that the non-English speaker can go, there is the impact of 'electronic commerce' as a major force that may make multilingualism the most natural path for cyberspace.
Sellers of products and services in the virtual global marketplace into which the Internet is developing must be prepared to deal with a virtual world that is just as multilingual as the physical world. If they want to be successful, they had better make sure they are speaking the languages of their customers!"
ML: "What did the Internet bring to the life of your organization?"
BK: "Our main service is providing language instruction via the Web. Our company is in the unique position of having come into existence BECAUSE of the Internet!"
ML: "How do you see the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?"
BK: "As a company that derives its very existence from the importance attached to languages, I believe the future will be an exciting and challenging one. But it will be impossible to be complacent about our successes and accomplishments. Technology is already changing at a frenetic pace. Life-long learning is a strategy that we all must use if we are to stay ahead and be competitive. This is a difficult enough task in an English-speaking environment. If we add in the complexities of interacting in a multilingual/multicultural cyberspace, then the task becomes even more demanding. As well as competition, there is also the necessity for cooperation — perhaps more so than ever before."
The seeds of cooperation across the Internet have certainly already been sown. Our NetGlos Project has depended on the goodwill of volunteer translators from Canada, U.S., Austria, Norway, Belgium, Israel, Portugal, Russia, Greece, Brazil, New Zealand and other countries. I think the hundreds of visitors we get coming to the NetGlos pages everyday is an excellent testimony to the success of these types of working relationships. I see the future depending even more on cooperative relationships — although not necessarily on a volunteer basis."
3.4. Textual Databases
Let us take the example of two textual databases relating to the French language — the French FRANTEXT and the US-French ARTFL Project.
The FRANTEXT textual database has been available on the Web through subscription since the beginning of 1995. It is prepared in France by the Institut national de la langue française (INaLF) (National Institute of the French Language), a section of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) (National Center for Scientific Research). This interactive database includes 180 million words resulting from the automatic processing of a collection of 3,500 texts in arts, techniques and sciences, representing five centuries of literature (16th-20th centuries).
At the beginning of 1998, 82 research centers and university libraries in Europe, Australia, Canada and Japan were subscribing to FRANTEXT, with 1,250 work stations connected to the database, and about 50 questioning sessions per day. The detailed results of the inquiry sent to FRANTEXT users in January 1998 are presented on the website by Arlette Attali.