Multilingualism on the Web Part 2

[3.1. Sites Indexing Language Resources / 3.2. Language Directories / 3.3.

Dictionaries and Glossaries / 3.4. Textual Databases / 3.5. Terminological Databases]

3.1. Sites Indexing Language Resources

Prepared by the Telematics for Libraries Programme of the European Union, Multilingual Tools and Services gives a series of links to dictionaries, multilingual support, projects, search engines by language, terminology data banks, thesauri, and translation systems.

Created by Tyler Chambers in May 1994, The Human-Languages Page is a comprehensive catalog of 1,800 language-related Internet resources in more than 100 different languages. The subject listings are: languages and literature; schools and inst.i.tutions; linguistics resources; products and services; organizations; jobs and internships. The category listings are: dictionaries and language lessons.

Tyler Chambers' other main language-related project is the Internet Dictionary Project. As explained on the website:

"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 a.s.sist 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 on-line 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 on-line 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 Chambers answered my questions in his e-mail of 14 September 1998.

ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Web?"

TC: "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 on-line. This was back before Netscape even existed -- Mosaic was almost the only Web browser, and web pages were little more than hyperlinked text doc.u.ments. 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 on-line. To my knowledge, there are very few language types which are not currently on-line: 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."

ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring to your professional life?"

TC: "My professional life is currently completely separate from my Internet life. Professionally, I'm a computer programmer/techie -- I find it challenging and it pays the bills. On-line, 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."

ML: "How do you see the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?"

TC: "As I've said before, 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."

Since its inception in 1989, the CTI (Computer in Teaching Initiative) Centre for Modern Languages has been based in the Language Inst.i.tute at the University of Hull, United Kingdom, and aims to promote and encourage the use of computers in language learning and teaching. The Centre provides information on how computer a.s.sisted language learning (CALL) can be effectively integrated into existing courses and offers support for language lecturers who are using, or who wish to use, computers in their teaching.

June Thompson, Manager of the Centre, answered my questions in his e-mail of December 14, 1998.

ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Internet?"

JT: "The Internet has the potential to increase the use of foreign languages, and our organisation certainly opposed any trend towards the dominance of English as the language of the Internet. An interesting paper on this topic was delivered by Madanmohan Rao at the WorldCALL conference in Melbourne, July 1998." [See details of the forthcoming conference book]

ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring to the life of your organization?"

JT: "The use of the Internet has brought an enormous new dimension to our work of supporting language teachers in their use of technology in teaching."

ML: "How do you see the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?"

JT: "I suspect that for some time to come, the use of Internet-related activities for languages will continue to develop alongside other technology-related activities (e.g. use of CD-ROMs - not all inst.i.tutions have enough networked hardware). In the future I can envisage use of Internet playing a much larger part, but only if such activities are pedagogy-driven. Our organisation is closely a.s.sociated with the WELL project [Web Enhanced Language Learning] which devotes itself to these issues."

Hosted by the CTI Centre for Modern Languages and the University of Hull (United Kingdom), EUROCALL is the European a.s.sociation for Computer a.s.sisted Language Learning. This a.s.sociation of language teaching professionals from Europe and worldwide aims to: promote the use of foreign languages within Europe; provide a European focus for all aspects of the use of technology for language learning; enhance the quality, dissemination and efficiency of CALL (computer a.s.sisted language learning) materials; and support Special Interest Groups (SIGs): CAPITAL (Computer a.s.sisted p.r.o.nunciation Investigation Teaching and Learning), a group of researchers and pract.i.tioners interested in using the computers in the domain of p.r.o.nunciation in the widest sense of the word, and WELL (Web Enhanced Language Learning), which will provide access to high-quality Web resources in 12 languages, selected and described by subject experts, plus information and examples on how to use them for teaching and learning.

Internet Resources for Language Teachers and Learners offers several categories of links: general languages resources (centres and departments, dictionaries and grammars; discussion lists; distance language learning; fonts; journals; linguistics; lists and indexes; miscellaneous; newspapers and periodicals; organizations; resource sites; software; translation and interpreting); language-specific resources; multilingual language sites; search engines and indexes; and commercial language sites (audiovisual, language schools, resources and directories, software).

Maintained by the Inst.i.tute of Phonetic Sciences, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Speech on the Web is an extensive list of links organized in various sections: congresses, meetings, and workshops; links and lists; phonetics and speech; natural language processing, cognitive science, and AI (artificial intelligence); computational linguistics; dictionaries; electronic newsletters, journals and publications.

Travlang is a site dedicated both to travel and languages. Created by Michael C.

Martin in 1994 on the site of his university when he was a student in physics, Foreign Languages for Travelers, included in Travlang in 1995, gives the possibility to learn 60 different languages on the Web. Translating Dictionaries gives access to free dictionaries in various languages (Afrikaans, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Spanish). Maintained by its founder, who is now a researcher in experimental physics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, the site offers numerous links to language dictionaries, translation services, language schools, multilingual bookstores, etc.

Michael C. Martin answered my questions in his e-mail of August 25, 1998.

ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Web?"

MCM: "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."

ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring to your professional life?"

MCM: "Well, certainly we've made a little business of it! 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."

ML: "How do you see the future of Internet-related activities as regards languages?"

MCM: "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 LINGUIST List is the component of the WWW Virtual Library for linguistics.

It gives an extensive series of links on linguistic resources: the profession (conferences, linguistic a.s.sociations, programs, etc.); research and research support (papers, dissertation abstracts, projects, bibliographies, topics, texts); publications; pedagogy; language resources (languages, language families, dictionaries, regional information); and computer support (fonts and software).

Helen Dry, moderator of the LINGUIST List, explained in her e-mail of August 18, 1998:

"The LINGUIST List, which I moderate, has a policy of posting in any language, since it's a list for linguists. However, we discourage posting the same message in several languages, simply because of the burden extra messages put on our editorial staff. (We are not a bounce-back list, but a moderated one. So each message is organized into an issue with like messages by our student editors before it is posted.) Our experience has been that almost everyone chooses to post in English. But we do link to a translation facility that will present our pages in any of 5 languages; so a subscriber need not read LINGUIST in English unless s/he wishes to. We also try to have at least one student editor who is genuinely multilingual, so that readers can correspond with us in languages other than English."

Maintained by the Yamada Language Center of the University of Oregon, the Yamada WWW Language Guides is a directory of language resources by geographic family and alphabetic family. It covers organizations, teaching inst.i.tutes, curriculum materials, cultural references, and WWW links.

Language today is a new magazine for people working in applied languages: translators, interpreters, terminologists, lexicographers and technical writers.

It is a collaborative project between Logos, who provide the website, and Praetorius, the UK language consultancy which keeps itself constantly informed about developments in applied languages. The site gives links to translators a.s.sociations, language schools, and dictionaries.

Geoffrey Kingscott, managing director of Praetorius, answered my questions in his e-mail of September 4, 1998.

ML: "How do you see multilingualism on the Web?"

GK: "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, ca.s.settes) 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, ca.s.sette 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 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 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."

ML: "What did the use of the Internet bring to your company?"

GK: "The Internet has made comparatively little difference to our company. It is an additional medium rather than one which will replace all others."

ML: "How do you see the future with the Internet?"

GK: "We will continue to have a company website, and to publish a version of the magazine on the Web, but it will remain only one factor in our work. We do use the Internet as a source of information which we then distill for our readers, who would otherwise be faced with the biggest problem of the Web -- undiscriminating floods of information."