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    The Internet and Languages
    The Internet and Languages
    The Internet and Languages
    Ebook110 pages1 hour

    The Internet and Languages

    By Marie Lebert

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    The Internet and Languages

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      Book preview

      The Internet and Languages - Marie Lebert

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Internet and Languages, by Marie Lebert

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      ** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below ** ** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. **

      Title: The Internet and Languages [around the year 2000]

      Author: Marie Lebert

      Release Date: November 8, 2009 [EBook #30422]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INTERNET AND LANGUAGES ***

      Produced by Al Haines

      THE INTERNET AND LANGUAGES

      [around the year 2000]

      MARIE LEBERT

      NEF, University of Toronto, 2009

      Copyright © 2009 Marie Lebert. All rights reserved.

      TABLE

        Introduction

        Language nations online

        Towards a linguistic democracy

        Encoding: from ASCII to Unicode

        First multilingual projects

        Online language dictionaries

        Learning languages online

        Minority languages on the web

        Multilingual encyclopedias

        Localization and internationalization

        Machine translation

        Chronology

        Websites

      INTRODUCTION

      It is true that the internet transcends the limitations of time, distances and borders, but what about languages? Non-English-speaking internet users reached 50% in July 2000.

      # Language Nations

      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 U.S., as well as odd places like Spanish-speaking Morocco. (Randy Hobler, consultant in internet marketing for translation products and services, September 1998)

      # Linguistic Democracy

      Whereas 'mother-tongue education' was deemed a human right for every child in the world by a UNESCO report in the early 1950s, '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. (Brian King, director of the WorldWide Language Institute, September 1998)

      # A medium for the world

      It is very important to be able to communicate in various languages. I would even say this is mandatory, because the information given on the internet is meant for the whole world, so why wouldn't we get this information in our language or in the language we wish? Worldwide information, but no broad choice for languages, this would be quite a contradiction, wouldn't it? (Maria Victoria Marinetti, teacher in Spanish and translator, August 1999)

      # Good software

      When software gets good enough for people to chat or talk on the web in real time in different languages, then we will see a whole new world appear before us. Scientists, political activists, businesses and many more groups will be able to communicate immediately without having to go through mediators or translators. (Tim McKenna, writer and philosopher, October 2000)

      ***

      Unless specified otherwise, quotations are excerpts from NEF interviews. Many thanks to all those who are quoted in this book, and who kindly answered questions about multilingualism over the years. Most interviews are available online . This book is also available in French, with a different text. Both versions are available online . The author, whose mother tongue is French, is responsible for any remaining mistakes in English.

      Marie Lebert is a researcher and editor specializing in technology for books, other media, and languages. Her books are published by NEF (Net des études françaises / Net of French Studies), University of Toronto, Canada, and are freely available online .

      LANGUAGE NATIONS ONLINE

      = [Quote]

      Randy Hobler, a consultant in internet marketing for Globalink, a company specializing in language translation software and services, 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 U.S., as well as odd places like Spanish-speaking Morocco.

      = [Text]

      At first, the internet was nearly 100% English. A network was set up by the Pentagon in 1969, before spreading to U.S. governmental agencies and universities from 1974 onwards, after Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn invented TCP/IP (transmission control protocol / internet protocol). 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 internet really took off, first in the U.S. and Canada, then worldwide.

      Why did the internet spread in North America first? The U.S. and Canada were leading the way in computer science and communication technology, and a connection to the internet, mainly through a phone line at the time, was much cheaper than in most countries. In Europe, avid internet users needed to navigate the web at night, when phone rates by the minute were cheaper, to cut their expenses. In 1998, some French, Italian and German users were so fed up with the high rates that they launched a movement to boycott the internet one day per week, for internet providers and phone companies to set up a special monthly rate for them. This paid off, and providers began to offer monthly internet rates.

      In the 1990s, the percentage of English decreased from nearly 100% to 80%. People from all over the world began to have access to the internet, and to post more and more webpages in their own languages.

      The first major study about language distribution on the web was run by Babel, a joint initiative from Alis Technologies, a company specializing in language translation services, and the Internet Society. The results were published in June 1997 on a webpage named Web Languages Hit Parade. The main languages were English with 82.3%, German with 4.0%, Japanese with 1.6%, French with 1.5%, Spanish with 1.1%, Swedish with 1.1%, and Italian with 1.0%.

      In Web Embraces Language Translation, an article published in ZDNN (ZDNetwork News) on 21 July 1998, Martha L. Stone explained: "This year, the number of new non-English websites is expected

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