[Summary]
With the web spreading worldwide, bilingual information online
became mandatory, as stated by Henk Slettenhaar, a professor in
communication technologies at Webster University, Geneva,
Switzerland, and a trilingual European. Henk spent his childhood
in Holland, has taught his courses in English and has lived in
neighboring France. He wrote in August 1999: "There are two main
categories of websites in my opinion. The first one is the global
outreach for business and information. Here the language is
definitely English first, with local versions where appropriate.
The second one is local information of all kinds in the most
remote places. If the information is meant for people of an ethnic
and/or language group, it should be in that language first, with
perhaps a summary in English. We have seen lately how important
these local websites are -- in Kosovo and Turkey, to mention just
the most recent ones. People were able to get information about
their relatives through these sites."
***
With the web spreading worldwide, bilingual information online
became mandatory, as stated by Henk Slettenhaar, a professor in
communication technologies at Webster University, Geneva,
Switzerland, and a trilingual European.
Henk spent his childhood in Holland, has taught his courses in
English and has lived in neighboring France. He wrote in December
1998: "I see multilingualism as a very important issue. Local
communities that are on the web should principally use the local
language for their information. If they want to present it to the
world community as well, it should be in English too. I see a real
need for bilingual websites. I am delighted there are so many
offerings in the original language now. I much prefer to read the
original with difficulty than getting a bad translation."
Henk added in August 1999: "There are two main categories of
websites in my opinion. The first one is the global outreach for
business and information. Here the language is definitely English
first, with local versions where appropriate. The second one is
local information of all kinds in the most remote places. If the
information is meant for people of an ethnic and/or language group,
it should be in that language first, with perhaps a summary in
English. We have seen lately how important these local websites
are -- in Kosovo and Turkey, to mention just the most recent ones.
People were able to get information about their relatives through
these sites."
Geoffrey Kingscott, managing director of Praetorius, a language
consultancy in applied languages, wrote in September 1998:
"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 [a
magazine for linguists] 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 it 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."
Steven Krauwer, coordinator of ELSNET (European Network of
Excellence in Human Language Technologies), explained in September
1998: "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."
What practical solutions would he suggest? He answered in August
1999: "At the author end: better education of web authors to use
combinations of modalities to make communication more effective
across language barriers (and not just for cosmetic reasons). At
the server end: more translation facilities à la AltaVista
(quality not impressive, but always better than nothing). At the
browser end: more integrated translation facilities (especially
for the smaller languages), and more quick integrated dictionary
lookup facilities."
Bruno Didier, webmaster of the Pasteur Institute’s library, wrote
in August 1999: “The internet doesn't belong to any one nation or
language. It is a vehicle for culture, and the first vector of
culture is language. The more languages there are on the net, the
more cultures will be represented there. I don't think we should
give in to the kneejerk temptation to translate webpages into a
largely universal language. Cultural exchanges will only be real
if we are prepared to meet with the other culture in a genuine way.
And this effort involves understanding the other culture's
language. This is very idealistic of course. In practice, when I
am monitoring, I curse Norwegian or Brazilian websites where there
isn't any English.”
Alain Bron, a consultant in information systems and a writer,
explained in January 1999: "Different languages will still be used
for a long time to come and this is healthy for the right to be
different. The risk is of course an invasion of one language to
the detriment of others, and with it the risk of cultural
standardization. I think online services will gradually emerge to
get around this problem. First, translators will be able to
translate and comment on texts by request, but mainly sites with a
large audience will provide different language versions, just as
the audiovisual industry does now."
In spring 2000, non-English-speaking users reached 50%. 78% of
webpages were still in English in September 2000.