The web, a multilingual encyclopedia

1974 > The internet “took off” 1990 > The invention of the web 1990 > The LINGUIST List 1991 > From ASCII to Unicode 1994 > Travlang, travel and languages 1995 > The Internet Dictionary Project 1995 > NetGlos, a glossary of the internet 1995 > Various languages on our screen 1995 > Global Reach, promoting localization 1996 > OneLook Dictionaries, a “fast finder” 1997 > 82.3% of the web in English 1997 > The internet, a tool for minority languages 1997 > A European terminology database 1997 > Babel Fish, a free translation software 1997 > The tools of the translation company Logos 1997 > Specialized terminology databases 1998 > The need for a “linguistic democracy” 1999 > Bilingual dictionaries in WordReference.com 1999 > The internet, a mandatory tool for translators 1999 > The need for bilingual information online 2000 > Online encyclopedias and dictionaries 2000 > The web portal yourDictionary.com 2000 > Project Gutengerg and languages 2001 > Wikipedia, a collaborative encyclopedia 2001 > UNL, a digital metalanguage project 2001 > A market for language translation software 2004 > The web 2.0, community and sharing 2007 > The ISO 639-3 standard to identify languages 2007 > Google Translate 2009 > 6,909 languages in the Ethnologue 2010 > A UNESCO atlas for endangered languages
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 institutional enhancement, will be removed. It would take a wilder imagination than mine to predict the effect of this development on the nature of humankind. (Robert Beard, founder of A Web of Online Dictionaries, september 1998)
This book is a chronology in 31 chapters from 1974 to 2010. Many thanks to all those who are quoted here, for their time and their friendship. Unless specified otherwise, the quotes are excerpts from the interviews conducted by the author during several years and published in the same collection.