= [Quote]
Tyler Chambers, who created the Human-Languages Page and the Internet
Dictionary Project, wrote in September 1998: "Online, 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. (...) 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?"
= Travlang
Travlang is a website dedicated to both travel and languages, created
in 1994 by Michael C. Martin on his university's website when he was a
student in physics. Travlang included one section called Foreign
Languages for Travelers, with links to online tools to learn 60
languages. Another section, Translating Dictionaries, gave access to
free dictionaries in a number of languages (Afrikaans, Czech, Danish,
Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Hungarian, Italian,
Latin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish). Other sections offered links to
language dictionaries, translation services, language schools, and
multilingual bookstores. In 1998, Travlang was still maintained by its
founder, who had become a researcher in experimental physics at the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California.
Michael C. Martin wrote in August 1998: "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.
(...) 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." Regarding the internet and languages in
general, "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 Human-Languages Page
Created by Tyler Chambers in May 1994, the Human-Languages Page (H-LP)
was a comprehensive catalog of 1,800 language-related internet
resources in 100 languages. In September 1998, there were six subject
listings and two category listings. The six subject listings were:
languages and literature, schools and institutions, linguistics
resources, products and services, organizations, jobs and internships.
The two category listings were: dictionaries, and language lessons.
Tyler Chambers' other language-related project was the Internet
Dictionary Project (IDP), launched in 1995. As explained on the
project's website in September 1998: "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 online
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 online 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 wrote in an email interview in September 1998: "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
online. This was back before Netscape even existed -- Mosaic was almost
the only web browser, and webpages 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 online. To my knowledge, there
are very few language types which are not currently online: 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. (...)
Online, 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."
How about the future? "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."
In spring 2001, the Human-Languages Page merged with the Languages
Catalog, a section of the WWW Virtual Library, to become
iLoveLanguages, In September 2003, iLoveLanguages provided an index of
2,000 linguistic resources in 100 languages. As for the Internet
Dictionary Project, Tyler ran out of time to manage this project, and
removed the ability to update the dictionaries in January 2007. People
can still search the available dictionaries or download the archived
files.
= NetGlos
Launched in 1995 by the WorldWide Language Institute (WWLI), an
institute providing language instruction via the web, NetGlos (which
stands for: Multilingual Glossary of Internet Terminology) has been
compiled as a voluntary, collaborative project by a number of
translators and other language professionals. In September 1998,
NetGlos was available in the following languages: Chinese, Croatian,
English, Dutch/Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Maori,
Norwegian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Brian King, director of the WorldWide Language Institute, wrote in
September 1998 in an email interview: "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 multilingual web become a reality:
1. <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 non-alphabetic 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 non-programmers can even insert Java applets
into their webpages without understanding a single line of code.
2. <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.
3. <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 loan
word 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 [at the end of
September 1998]. It will no doubt be an excellent example of the
ongoing, dynamic process of 'russification' of web terminology.
4. <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.
5. <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!"
How about the future of the WorldWide Language Institute? "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.
Lifelong 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."
= Logos
Logos is a global translation company with headquarters in Modena,
Italy. In 1997, Logos had 200 in-house translators in Modena and 2,500
free-lance translators worldwide, who processed around 200 texts per
day. The company made a bold move, and decided to put on the web the
linguistic tools used by its translators, for the internet community to
freely use them as well. The linguistic tools were the Logos
Dictionary, a multilingual dictionary with 7 billion words (in fall
1998); the Logos Wordtheque, a multilingual library with 300 billion
words extracted from translated novels, technical manuals and other
texts; the Logos Linguistic Resources, a database of 500 glossaries;
and the Logos Universal Conjugator, a database for verbs in 17
languages.
When interviewed by Annie Kahn in December 1997 for the French daily Le
Monde, Rodrigo Vergara, 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. This move has in fact attracted many
customers, and also allowed us to widen our network of translators,
thanks to contacts made in the wake of the initiative."
In the same article, "Les mots pour le dire" (The Words to Tell it),
Annie Kahn wrote: "The Logos site is much more than a mere dictionary
or a collection of links to other online dictionaries. The cornerstone
is the document search program, 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' [didactic], 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, including in foreign translations,
thanks to a partnership agreement with the famous online bookstore
Amazon.com. However, if no text containing the required word is found,
the program acts as a search engine, sending the user to other web
sources containing this word. 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 suggestions, after which Logos translators check the suggested
translations they receive."