[Overview]
In 1998, Randy Hobler was a consultant in internet marketing for
Globalink, a company specializing in language translation software and
services. Randy wrote in September 1998: "85% of the content of the web
in 1998 is in English and going down. This trend is driven not only by
more websites and users in non-English-speaking countries, but by
increasing localization of company and organization sites, and
increasing use of machine translation to/from various languages to
translate websites. (...) Because the internet has no national
boundaries, the organization of users is bounded by other criteria
driven by the medium itself. In terms of multilingualism, you have
virtual communities, for example, of what I call 'Language Nations'...
all those people on the internet wherever they may be, for whom a given
language is their native language. Thus, the Spanish Language nation
includes not only Spanish and Latin American users, but millions of
Hispanic users in the US, as well as odd places like Spanish-speaking
Morocco."
[In Depth (published in 2000, updated in 2004)]
In 1998, other languages than English began spreading on the web. In
fact, main non-English languages were present nearly from the start.
But most of the web was in English. Then people from all over the world
began having access to the internet, and posting pages in their own
languages. The percentage of the English language began to slowly
decrease from nearly 100% to 90%.
In 1998, Randy Hobler was an internet marketing consultant for
Globalink, a company specialized in language translation software and
services. Previously, Randy worked as a consultant for IBM, Johnson &
Johnson, Burroughs Wellcome, Pepsi, Heublein, and others.
Randy wrote in September 1998: "Because the internet has no national
boundaries, the organization of users is bounded by other criteria
driven by the medium itself. In terms of multilingualism, you have
virtual communities, for example, of what I call 'Language Nations'...
all those people on the internet wherever they may be, for whom a given
language is their native language. Thus, the Spanish Language nation
includes not only Spanish and Latin American users, but millions of
Hispanic users in the US, as well as odd places like Spanish-speaking
Morocco."
In 1999, Jean-Pierre Cloutier was the editor of Chroniques de Cybérie,
a weekly report of internet news. Jean-Pierre wrote in August 1999:
"The web is going to grow in these non English-speaking regions. So we
have to take into account the technical aspects of the medium if we
want to reach these 'new' users. I think it is a pity there are so few
translations of important documents and essays published on the
web -- from English into other languages and vice-versa. (...) The
recent introduction of the internet in regions where it is spreading
raises questions which would be good to read about. When will
Spanish-speaking communications theorists and those speaking other
languages be translated?"
In 1999, Marcel Grangier was the head of the French Section of the
Swiss Federal Government's Central Linguistic Services, which meant he
was in charge of organizing translation matters for the Swiss
government. Marcel wrote in January 1999: "We can see multilingualism
on the internet as a happy and irreversible inevitability. So we have
to laugh at the doomsayers who only complain about the supremacy of
English. Such supremacy is not wrong in itself, because it is mainly
based on statistics (more PCs per inhabitant, more people speaking
English, etc.). The answer is not to 'fight' English, much less whine
about it, but to build more sites in other languages. As a translation
service, we also recommend that websites be multilingual. The
increasing number of languages on the internet is inevitable and can
only boost multicultural exchanges. For this to happen in the best
possible circumstances, we still need to develop tools to improve
compatibility. Fully coping with accents and other characters is only
one example of what can be done."
In 1998, Henri Slettenhaar was a professor at Webster University,
Geneva, Swizerland. He insisted regularly on the need of bilingual
websites, in the original language and in English. 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."
He added in August 1999: "There are two main categories 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."
He added in August 2000: "Multilingualism has expanded greatly. Many
e-commerce websites are multilingual now and there are companies that
sell products which make localization possible (adaptation of websites
to national markets)."
Non English-speaking users reached 50% in Summer 2000. According to the
company Global Reach, they were 52.5% in Summer 2001, 57% in December
2001, 59.8% in April 2002, 64.4% in September 2003 (including 34.9%
non-English-speaking Europeans and 29.4% Asians) and 64.2% in March
2004 (including 37.9% non-English-speaking Europeans and 33% Asians).