Chapter 2

While English still dominates the Web, the growth of monolingual non-English websites is gaining strength with the various solutions to the font problems. Languages that are endangered are primarily languages without writing systems at all (only 1/3 of the world's 6,000+ languages have writing systems). I still do not see the Web contributing to the loss of language identity and still suspect it may, in the long run, contribute to strengthening it. More and more Native Americans, for example, are contacting linguists, asking them to write grammars of their language and help them put up dictionaries. For these people, the Web is an affordable boon for cultural expression.

= What is your best experience with the Internet?

My own website, whose popularity continues to astound me. I receive a dozen or so letters from visitors each day, at least half of which compliment my work. It is difficult to maintain the size of my ego but the flattery is very good for the soul. I am astounded that only 6 years away from the inception of the Web, I can find over 1200 creditable on-line dictionaries in more than 200 different languages.

= And your worst experience?

The worst experience is finding my website copied with my name removed from it. I have always been able to resolve the problem, however. My experience with the Internet has been very positive and if yourDictionary.com succeeds, it will be even more positive.

MICHAEL BEHRENS (Bielefeld, Germany)

#In charge of the digital library of the digital library of the Bielefeld University Library

* Interview of September 25, 1998

= When did you begin your digital library?

It depends what you understand this term to mean. To some here, "digital library" seems to be everything even remotely to do with the Internet. The library started its own web server in summer 1995. There's no exact date because it took some time for us to get it to work in a reasonably reliable way. Before that, it had been offering most of its services via Telnet, which wasn't used much by customers, although in theory they could have accessed a lot of material from home. But in those days hardly anybody had Internet access at home. We started digitizing rare prints from our own library, and some that were sent in via library loan, in November 1996.

= How many digitized texts do you have?

In that first phase of our attempts at digitization, starting in November 1996 and ending in June 1997, 38 rare prints were scanned as image files and made available on the Web. In the same period, there were also a few digital materials prepared as accompanying material for lectures held at the university (image files as excerpts from printed works). These are, for copyright reasons, not available outside the campus. The next step, which is just being completed, is the digitization of the Berlinische Monatsschrift, a German periodical from the Enlightenment, comprising 58 volumes -- 2,574 articles on 30,626 pages.

A rather bigger project to digitize German periodicals from the 18th and early 19th century is planned. This will involve about a million pages. These periodicals will be not just be from this library's stock, but the project would be coordinated here and some of the technical work done here too.

GUY BERTRAND & CYNTHIA DELISLE (Montreal)

#Respectively scientific director and consultant at the CEVEIL (Centre d'expertise et de veille inforoutes et langues - Centre for Assessment and Monitoring of Information Highways and Languages)

The CEVEIL, set up in 1995, is a non-profit-making body based in Quebec whose main purpose is to think about the use and processing of languages on information highways, from a French-language viewpoint, through strategic monitoring activity and creating a network of exchanges and evaluation. The CEVEIL also focuses on the language industry in general (voice recognition, machine translation and optical character recognition, for example) and related fields such as strategic management of data, knowledge management, setting norms and standardisation. The CEVEIL is part of the CEFRIO (Centre francophone d'information des organisations - French-language Centre for Information on Organisations).

*Interview of August 23, 1998 (original interview in French)

= What did using the Internet affect the CEVEIL?

First, the Web is one of the reasons for CEVEIL's existence, because we focus on things like language use and processing on the Internet.

The Web is also where we get most of our information on the topics we're interested in. We regularly monitor sites that supply daily and weekly news. So we definitely make more use of the Internet than we do other written sources.

We also use electronic mail a great deal to keep in touch with our contributors, to obtain information and carry out projects. CEVEIL is a "network structure" which might not survive without the Internet to link all the people involved in it.

The Web is also the most important means for distributing our products to target clients -- sending electronic news to our subscribers, creating an online magazine, and distributing information and documents through our website.

= How do you see the growth of a multilingual Web?

Multilingualism on the Internet is the logical and natural consequence of the diversity of human beings. Because the Web was first developed and used in the United States, it's not really surprising it started out as -- and still is -- essentially Anglophone. But this is beginning to change, because most new users will not have English as their mother tongue and because non-English-speaking communities already on the Web will no longer accept the dominance of English and will want to use their own language to some extent.

We can envisage, in a few years time, a situation similar to the one in publishing concerning use of different languages. This means only a small number of languages will be used (compared to the several thousand that exist). So we think the Web should try to further support minority cultures and languages, particularly in the case of dispersed communities.

The arrival on the Internet of languages other than English, while demanding genuine readjustment and providing undeniable enrichment, emphasizes the need for linguistic tools to cope with the situation. These will emerge from research and promoting awareness in areas such as machine translation, standardization, searching for information, automatic summarizing, and so on.

= How do you see the future?

The Internet is here to stay. The arrival on it of languages other than English is also irreversible. So we have to take that into account from an economic, social, political and cultural point of view. Sectors such as advertising, vocational training, knowledge management, and work in groups or within networks will have to change. This brings us back to the need to develop really effective technology and tools to encourage exchanges in a truly multilingual global village.

*Interview of March 13, 2000 (original interview in French)

= What has happened since our first interview?

Since then, the CEVEIL has stopped putting out weekly news bulletins and its monthly magazine. This is not so much because we've changed direction but rather for want of staff and funding. We don't plan to resume those activities for the moment.

= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?

Guy Bertrand: It's very important to respect copyright and it's up to the authors to decide what they want to do about it. The Web is offering more and more things for free. Authors don't have to accept that, but a growing number of them are choosing to adapt to it and are benefitting. The business models on the Web are changing very rapidly and will continue to. New ones will spring up with a strong free-of-charge content, but copyright will have to be respected in newer and more original ways by authors and providers of services and content.

Cynthia Delisle: Ideally, copyright should be respected on the Web as it is in other media such as the radio and the written press. However, the Internet raises new kinds of problems here because of the ease that data can be (re)produced and (re)distributed on a huge scale and because of the tradition of it being available for free. This tradition means people balk at paying for products and services they'd find it quite normal to pay for in other situations and they also perhaps have fewer qualms, in the context of the Net, about using pirated products. I think respecting copyright is one of the biggest issues for the future of the Net and it'll certainly be very interesting to see what solutions will emerge to deal with it.

= How do you see the growth of a multilingual Web?

Guy Bertrand: Worldwide e-commerce has grown enormously since 1998 and businesses are increasingly keen to use the languages of their potential customers, which is going to boost further this multilingual aspect. E-commerce won't take over the Web, but its importance is growing as multilingualism increases there. But the tools for multilingualism on the Web are unfortunately always one step behind.

Cynthia Delisle: I think the trend which had already begin in 1998 has now established itself and the future of the Internet is definitely going to be a multilingual one. The Net is becoming more international and it's hard to see how this can happen without it becoming linguistically and culturally more diverse. English will probably always be the Net's most frequently-used language, but the proportion of sites and pages available in other languages will steadily increase until a certain equilibrium is reached. I also quite agree with Mr Bertrand when he points out that the tools to handle this linguistic diversity are not yet ready. Machine translation, for example, has made woefully little headway in recent years. Yet the needs are growing all the time, which is why we need to step up research and development in these areas.

= What is your best experience with the Internet?

Guy Bertrand: My first one with the site www.neuromedia.com.

Cynthia Delisle: Being in regular touch with my family at little cost through e-mail while I was abroad for long periods.

= And your worst experience?

Cynthia Delisle: The problem of harrassment, such as constant unsolicited personal e-mails several years ago, before servers installed spam filters.

ALAIN BRON (Paris)

#Information systems consultant and writer. The Internet is one of the "characters" of his novel Sanguine sur toile (Sanguine on the Web).

After studying engineering in France and the US and a job as head of major projects at Bull, Alain Bron is now an information systems consultant at EdF/GdF (Electricité de France / Gaz de France).

His second novel, Sanguine sur toile (Sanguine on the Web), is available in print from Editions du Choucas (published in 1999) and in PDF format from Editions 00h00.com (published in 2000). It won the Lions Club International Prize in 2000.

Alain Bron wrote another novel, Concert pour Asmodée (Concert for Asmodée) (published in 1998 by Editions La Mirandole), and a collection of psycho-sociological essays, notably La démocracie de la solitude (The Democracy of Solitude) (with Laurent Maruani, 1997) and La gourmandise du tapir (The Greed of the Tapir) (with Vincent de Gaulejac, 1996), both published by DDB (Desclée de Brauwer).

*Interview of November 29, 1999 (original interview in French)

= Can you tell us a bit about your novel Sanguine sur toile?

In French, "toile" means the Web as well as the canvas of a painting, and "sanguine" is the red chalk of a drawing as well as one of the adjectives derived from blood (sang). But would a love of colours justify a murder? Sanguine sur toile is the strange story of an Internet surfer caught up in an upheaval inside his own computer, which is being remotely operated by a very mysterious person whose only aim is revenge.

I wanted to take the reader into the worlds of painting and enterprise, which intermingle, escaping and meeting up again in the dazzle of software. The reader is invited to try to untangle for himself the threads twisted by passion alone. To penetrate the mystery, he will have to answer many questions. Even with the world at his fingertips, isn't the Internet surfer the loneliest person in the world?

In view of the competition, what's the greatest degree of violence possible in an enterprise these days? Does painting tend to reflect the world or does it create another one? I also wanted to show that images are not that peaceful. You can use them to take action, even to kill. What part does the Internet play in your novel?

Internet is a character in itself. Instead of being described in its technical complexity, it's depicted as a character that can be either threatening, kind or amusing. Remember the computer screen has a dual role -- displaying as well as concealing. This ambivalence is the theme throughout. In such a game, the big winner is of course the one who knows how to free himself from the machine's grip and put humanism and intelligence before all else.

= Can you also tell us about your issue: Internet: anges et démons! (The Internet: Angels and Devils!)?

Cultures en mouvement (Cultures in Movement), a magazine I sometimes write for, asked me in April 1999 to guest-edit a special issue on cyberculture. I brought together specialists from very different fields -- an economist, a sociologist, a psychiatrist, an artist, the head of an association -- to talk about the Internet. We quickly agreed that the Internet brings out the best as well as the worst. So we called the special issue Internet: anges et démons! (The Internet: Angels and Devils!). The articles were published in the magazine at the same time as we opened a site with the same name hosted by place-internet.com. The media praised the site, which presents the Internet calmly and with a healthy reserve.

= What exactly is your professional activity?

I spent about 20 years at Bull. There I was involved in all the adventures of computer and telecommunications development. I represented the computer industry at ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and chaired the network group of the X/Open consortium. I also took part in the very beginning of the Internet with my colleagues of Honeywell in the US in late 1978. I'm now an information systems consultant at EdF/ GdF (Electricité de France / Gaz de France), where I keep the main computer projects of these firms and their foreign subsdiaries running smoothly. And I write. I've writing since I was a teenager. Short stories (about 100), psycho-sociological essays, articles and novels. It's an inner need as well as a very great pleasure.

= How did using the Internet change your professional life?

As I fell into computers when I was very young, I don't think I was affected by the Internet. I can look at it with enough distance to recognize the mistakes I made with it and to warn about its misuse, while avoiding veteran's fatigue and burn-out.

= How do you see the future?

The important thing about the Internet is the human value that's added to it. The Internet can never be shrewd about a situation, take a risk or replace the intelligence of the heart. The Internet simply speeds up the decision-making process and reduces uncertainty by providing information. We still have to leave time to time, let ideas mature and bring an essential touch of humanity to a relationship. For me, the aim of the Internet is meeting people, not increasing the number of electronic exchanges.

= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?

I regard the Web today as a public domain. That means in practice the notion of copyright on it disappears: everyone can copy everyone else. Anything original risks being copied at once if copyrights are not formally registered or if works are available without payment facilities. A solution is to make people pay for information, but this is no watertight guarantee against it being copied. Anyway, with novels, I prefer them in paper form.

= How do you see the growth of a multilingual Web?

Different languages will still be used for a long time to come and this is healthy for the right to be different. The risk is of course an invasion of one language to the detriment of others, and with it the risk of cultural standardization. I think online services will gradually emerge to get around this problem. First, translators will be able to translate and comment on texts by request, but mainly sites with a large audience will provide different language versions, just as the audiovisual industry does now.

= What is your best experience with the Internet?

After my second novel, Sanguine sur toile, was published, I got a message from a friend I'd lost touch with more than 20 years ago. He recognized himself as one of the book's characters. We saw each other again recently over a good bottle of wine and swapped memories and discussed our plans.

= And your worst experience?

Viruses, "happiness" chain letters, business soliciting, extreme right-wing sites and unverified information are spreading very quickly these days. I'm seriously asking myself: "What kind of baby did I help to bring into the world?"

TYLER CHAMBERS (Boston, Massachusetts)

#Creator of The Human-Languages Page (who became iLoveLanguages in 2001) and The Internet Dictionary Project

The Human-Languages Page (created by Tyler Chambers in May 1994) and the Languages Catalog of the WWW Virtual Library redesigned the site in 2001 to become iLoveLanguages in 2001. It is now a comprehensive catalog of more than 2.000 language-related Internet resources in more than 100 different languages.

Tyler Chambers' other main language-related project is The Internet Dictionary Project, initiated in 1995. Its "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 assist 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." (extract from the website)

*Interview of September 14, 1998

= How did using the Internet change your professional life?

My professional life is currently completely separate from my Internet life. Professionally, I'm a computer programmer/techie (in Boston, Massachusetts) -- I find it challenging and it pays the bills. Online, 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.

= How do you see the growth of a multilingual Web?

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 online. This was back before Netscape even existed -- Mosaic was almost the only Web browser, and web pages were little more than hyperlinked text documents. 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 online: browsers have now 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.

= How do you see the future?

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.

ALAIN CLAVET (Ottawa)

#Policy analyst with the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages in Canada

"The mandate of the Office of the Commissioner is: to ensure recognition of the status of English and French, Canada's two official languages; to ensure respect for the Official Languages Act; to provide information about the services of the Office of the Commissioner, aspects of the Official Languages Act and its importance to Canadian society. The Commissioner protects: the right of members of the public to use English or French to communicate with federal institutions and receive services from them as provided for in the Act and its regulations; the right of federal employees to work in either official language in designated regions; the right of all English-speaking Canadians and French-speaking Canadians to enjoy equal opportunities for employment and advancement in federal institutions." (extract from the website)