Multilingualism on the Web Part 1

Multilingualism on the Web.

by Marie Lebert.

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-a.s.sisted 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 quete d'ident.i.te sur le Web, published by the cybermagazine Multimedium, Jean-Pierre Cloutier, author of Chroniques de Cyberie, 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. .h.i.t Parade, dated June 1997, and the languages, listed in order of usage, are: English 82.3%, German 4.0%, j.a.panese 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; j.a.panese, 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 poetes (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 a.s.sistance 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 Multimedium.

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 Telecom, 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 partic.i.p.ated: the Belgian-French Community, Benin, Cameroon, Canada, Canada-New Brunswick, Canada-Quebec, Cote 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 Conference des ministres charges 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.