[Summary]
Brian King, director of the WorldWide Language Institute (WWLI),
brought up the concept of "linguistic democracy" in September 1998:
"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."
***
Brian King, director of the WorldWide Language Institute (WWLI),
brought up the concept of "linguistic democracy" in September 1998:
"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."
For Brian King, one factor contributing to the development of a
multilingual internet is the “competition for a chunk of the
'global market' by major industry players”, with “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.”
Another factor is the development of 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!"
Founder of Euro-Marketing Associates and its virtual branch Global
Reach, Bill Dunlap championed the assets of e-commerce in Europe
among his fellow compatriots in the U.S., promoting the
internationalization and localization of their websites. He wrote
in December 1998: "There are so few people in the U.S. interested
in communicating in many languages -- most Americans are still
under the delusion that the rest of the world speaks English.
However, in Europe, the countries are small enough so that an
international perspective has been necessary for centuries."
Peter Raggett, deputy-head (and then head) of the Central Library
of OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development),
wrote in August 1999: "I think it is incumbent on European
organizations and businesses to try and offer websites in three or
four languages if resources permit. In this age of globalization
and electronic commerce, businesses are finding that they are
doing business across many countries. Allowing French, German,
Japanese speakers to easily read one's website as well as English
speakers will give a business a competitive edge in the domain of
electronic trading."
As the internet quickly spread worldwide, companies needed to
offer bilingual, trilingual, even plurilingual websites to reach
as large an audience as possible, while adapting their content to
a given audience, either a country or a linguistic community. Thus
the need to internationalize and localize websites, which became a
major trend in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with English-
language companies and organizations setting up plurilingual
websites, in English and other languages, and non-English-language
companies and organizations setting up websites in their own
language(s) and English.