Multilingualism on the Web Part 3

3.2. Language Directories

The Ethnologue is the electronic version of The Ethnologue, 13th ed., (editor: Barbara F. Grimes, consulting editors: Richard S. Pittman and Joseph E. Grimes), published in 1996 by the Summer Inst.i.tute of Linguistics, Dallas, Texas. This catalogue of more than 6,700 languages spoken in 228 countries is accessible through two search tools: The Ethnologue Name Index, which lists language names, dialect names, and alternate names, and The Ethnologue Language Family Index, which organizes languages according to language families.

Barbara F. Grimes, editor of The Ethnologue, wrote in her e-mail of August 18, 1998:

"Multilingual web pages are more widely useful, but much more costly to maintain. We have had requests for The Ethnologue in a few other languages, but we do not have the personnel or funds to do the translation or maintenance, since it is constantly being updated.

We have found the Internet to be useful, convenient, and supplementary to our work. Our main use of it is for e-mail.

It is a convenient means of making information more widely available to a wider audience than the printed Ethnologue provides.

On the other hand, many people in the audience we wish to reach do not have access to computers, so in some ways the Ethnologue on Internet reaches a limited audience who own computers. I am particularly thinking of people in the so-called 'third world'."

Created in December 1995 by Yoshi Mikami of Asia Info Network, The Languages of the World by Computers and the Internet (commonly called Logos Home Page or Kotoba Home Page) gives, for each language, its brief history, features, writing system, and character set and keyboard for computers and the Internet processing. In his e-mail of December 17, 1998, Yoshi Mikami wrote:

"My native tongue is j.a.panese. Because I had my graduate education in the US and worked in the computer business, I became bilingual j.a.panese/American English. I was always interested in different languages and cultures, so I learned some Russian, French and Chinese along the way. In late 1995, I created on the Web The Languages of the World by Computers and the Internet and tried to summarize there the brief history, linguistic and phonetic features, writing system and computer processing for each of the six major languages of the world, in English and j.a.panese. As I gained more experience, I invited my two a.s.sociates to write a book on viewing, understanding and creating the multilingual web pages, which was published in August, 1997, as "The Multilingual Web Guide" (see its support page) in the j.a.panese edition, the world's first book on such a subject.

Thousands of years ago, in Egypt, China and elsewhere, people were more conscious about communicating their laws and thoughts not in just one language, but in different languages. In our modern world, each nation state has adopted more or less one language for its own use. I see in the future of the Internet a greater use of different languages and multilingual pages, not a simple gravitation to American English, and a more creative use of multilingual computer translation. Ninety nine percent of the Webs created in j.a.pan are written in j.a.panese!"

Maintained on the website of the College Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Island of Skye, Scotland, by Caoimhin P. o Donnaile, European Minority Languages is a list of minority languages by alphabetic order and by language family. The site also gives links to other sites dealing with the same subject worldwide.

Caoimhin P. o Donnaile wrote in her e-mail of August 18, 1998:

"-- The Internet has contributed and will contribute to the wildfire spread of English as a world language.

-- The Internet can greatly help minority languages, but this will not happen by itself. It will only happen if people want to maintain the language as an aim in itself.

-- The Web is very useful for delivering language lessons, and there is a big demand for this.

-- The Unicode (ISO 10646) character set standard is very important and will greatly a.s.sist in making the Internet more multilingual."

3.3. Dictionaries and Glossaries

There are more and more on-line dictionaries. Let us give three examples (English, French and multilingual).

In Merriam-Webster Online: the Language Center, a main publisher of English dictionaries gives free access to a collection of on-line resources. The goal is to help track down definitions, spellings, p.r.o.nunciations, synonyms, vocabulary exercises, and other key facts about words and language. The main on-line resources are: WWWebster Dictionary, WWebster Thesaurus, Webster's Third (a lexical landmark), Guide to International Business Communications, Vocabulary Builder (with interactive vocabulary quizzes), and the Barnhart Dictionary Companion (hot new words).

The Dictionnaire francophone en ligne is the web version of the Dictionnaire universel francophone, published by Hachette, a major French publisher, and the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUPELF-UREF) (University Agency for Francophony), which presents the standard French and the French words and expressions used in the five continents.

The Logos Dictionary is a multilingual dictionary with 8 million entry words in all languages. Logos, an international translation company based in Modena, Italy, gives free access to the linguistic tools used by its translators: 200 translators in its headquarters and 2,500 translators on-line all over the world, who process around 200 texts per day. Apart from the Logos Dictionary, these tools include: the Wordtheque, a word-by-word multilingual library with a ma.s.sive database (325 million words) containing multilingual novels, technical literature and translated texts; Linguistic Resources, a database of 536 glossaries; and the Universal Conjugator, a database for conjugation of verbs in 17 languages.

In Les mots pour le dire, an article of the French daily newspaper Le Monde of December 7, 1997, Annie Kahn wrote:

"The Logos site is much more than a mere dictionary or a collection of links to other on-line dictionaries. A cornerstone of the system is the doc.u.ment search software, 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', 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, thanks to a partnership agreement with Amazon.com, the well-known on-line book shop. Foreign translations are also available. If however no text containing the required word is found, the system acts as a search engine, sending the user to other websites concerning the term in question. In the case of certain words, you can even hear the p.r.o.nunciation. If there is no translation currently available, the system calls on the public to contribute. Everyone can make their own suggestion, after which Logos translators and the company verify the translations forwarded."

In the same article, Rodrigo Vergara, the 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. In fact the operation attracted a great number of customers, and also allowed us to widen our network of translators, thanks to the contacts made in the wake of this initiative."

The dictionary directories are invaluable tools for linguists, such as Dictionnaires electroniques (Electronic Dictionaries), OneLook Dictionaries and A Web of Online Dictionaries.

Dictionnaires electroniques (Electronic Dictionaries) is an extensive list of electronic dictionaries prepared by the Section francaise des Services linguistiques centraux (SLC-f) (French Section of the Central Linguistic Services) of the Swiss Federal Administration, and cla.s.sified into five main sections: abbreviations and acronyms; monolingual dictionaries; bilingual dictionaries; multilingual dictionaries; and geographical information. The search of a dictionary is also possible by key-words.

Marcel Grangier, head of this section, answered my questions in his e-mail of January 14, 1999.

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

MG: "Multilingualism on the Internet can be seen as a happy and above all irreversible inevitability. In this perspective we have to make fun of the wet blankets who only speak to complain about the supremacy of English. This supremacy is not wrong in itself, inasmuch as it is the result of mainly statistical facts (more PCs per inhabitant, more English-speaking people, etc.).

The counter-attack is not to 'fight against English' and even less to whine about it, but to increase sites in other languages. As a translation service, we also recommend the multilingualism of websites."

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

MG: "To work without the Internet is simply impossible now -- as well as all the tools used (e-mail, electronic press, services for translators), Internet is for us an essential and inexhaustible source of information in what I would call the 'non-structured sector' of the Web. For example, when the answer to a translation problem can't be found in websites presenting information in an organized way, in most cases search engines allow us to find the missing link somewhere on the network."

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

MG: "The increase in the number of languages on the Internet is inevitable, and can only be a benefit for multicultural exchanges. For the exchanges to happen in an optimal environment, it is still necesssary to develop tools which will improve compatibility -- the complete management of diacritics is only one example of what can be done."

Provided as a free service since April 1996 by Study Technologies, Englewood, Colorado, OneLook Dictionaries, by Robert Ware, is the fastest finder for more than 2 million words in 425 dictionaries in various fields: business, computer/Internet, medical, miscellaneous, religion, science, sports, technology, general, and slang.

In his e-mail of September 2, 1998, Robert Ware explained:

"On the personal side, I was almost entirely in contact with people who spoke one language and did not have much incentive to expand language abilities. Being in contact with the entire world has a way of changing that. And changing it for the better! [...] I have been slow to start including non-English dictionaries (partly because I am monolingual). But you will now find a few included."

A Web of Online Dictionaries, by Robert Beard, is an index of more than 800 on-line dictionaries in 150 languages, and other tools: multilingual dictionaries; specialized English dictionaries; thesauri and other vocabulary aids; language identifiers and guessers; an index of dictionary indices; a Web of on-line grammars; and a Web of linguistic fun (materials about linguistics for non-specialists).

Robert Beard answered my questions in his e-mail of September 1, 1998.

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

RB: "There was an initial fear that the Web posed a threat to multilingualism on the Web, since HTML and other programming languages are based on English and since there are simply more websites in English than any other language.

However, my websites indicate that multilingualism is very much alive and the Web may, in fact, serve as a vehicle for preserving many endangered languages. I now have links to dictionaries in 150 languages and grammars of 65 languages.

Moreover, the new attention paid by browser developers to the different languages of the world will encourage even more websites in different languages."

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

RB: "As a language teacher, the Web represents a plethora of new resources produced by the target culture, new tools for delivering lessons (interactive Java and Shockwave exercises) and testing, which are available to students any time they have the time or interest -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is also an almost limitless publication outlet for my colleagues and I, not to mention my inst.i.tution."

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

RB: "Ultimately all course materials, including lecture notes, exercises, moot and credit testing, grading, and interactive exercises far more effective in conveying concepts that we have not even dreamed of yet. The Web will be an encyclopedia of the world by the world for the world. There will be no information or knowledge that anyone needs that will not be available. The major hindrance to international and interpersonal understanding, personal and inst.i.tutional enhancement, will be removed. It would take a wilder imagination than mine to predict the effect of this development on the nature of humankind."

Initiated by the WorldWide Language Inst.i.tute, NetGlos (The Multilingual Glossary of Internet Terminology) is currently being compiled from 1995 as a voluntary, collaborative project by a number of translators and other professionals. Versions for the following languages are being prepared: Chinese, Croatian, English, Dutch/Flemish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Maori, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Brian King, director of the WorldWide Language Inst.i.tute, answered my questions in his e-mail of September 15, 1998.