MULTILINGUALISM ON THE WEB © 1999 by Marie Lebert is licensed under
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MULTILINGUALISM ON THE WEB
MARIE LEBERT
CEVEIL, Montreal, 1999 & NEF, University of Toronto, 2001
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
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Multilingualism
3. Language Resources
4. Translation Resources
5. Language-Related Research
6. Index of Websites
7. Index of Names
1. INTRODUCTION
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.]
2. MULTILINGUALISM
[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 of
Chroniques de Cybérie, a weekly cybermagazine widely read in the French-speaking
Internet 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 Network
News) 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 at
INaLF-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 speaks
English as a first language, and only 28% speaks English at all. A recent study
showed that only 32% of Web surfers on the European continent consult the Web in
English.
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."
3. LANGUAGE RESOURCES
[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 Dictionary
Project. 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 of
December 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: