Technology and Books for All

by Marie Lebert

1998: MULTILINGUAL WEB

[Overview]

In 1998, Randy Hobler was a consultant in internet marketing for Globalink, a company specializing in language translation software and services. Randy wrote in September 1998: "85% of the content of the web in 1998 is in English and going down. This trend is driven not only by more websites and users in non-English-speaking countries, but by increasing localization of company and organization sites, and increasing use of machine translation to/from various languages to translate websites. (…) 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 US, as well as odd places like Spanish-speaking Morocco."

[In Depth (published in 2000, updated in 2004)]

In 1998, other languages than English began spreading on the web. In fact, main non-English languages were present nearly from the start. But most of the web was in English. Then people from all over the world began having access to the internet, and posting pages in their own languages. The percentage of the English language began to slowly decrease from nearly 100% to 90%.

In 1998, Randy Hobler was an internet marketing consultant for
Globalink, a company specialized in language translation software and
services. Previously, Randy worked as a consultant for IBM, Johnson &
Johnson, Burroughs Wellcome, Pepsi, Heublein, and others.

Randy 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 US, as well as odd places like Spanish-speaking Morocco."

In 1999, Jean-Pierre Cloutier was the editor of Chroniques de Cybérie, a weekly report of internet news. Jean-Pierre wrote in August 1999: "The web is going to grow in these non English-speaking regions. So we have to take into account the technical aspects of the medium if we want to reach these 'new' users. I think it is a pity there are so few translations of important documents and essays published on the web — from English into other languages and vice-versa. (…) The recent introduction of the internet in regions where it is spreading raises questions which would be good to read about. When will Spanish-speaking communications theorists and those speaking other languages be translated?"

In 1999, Marcel Grangier was the head of the French Section of the Swiss Federal Government's Central Linguistic Services, which meant he was in charge of organizing translation matters for the Swiss government. Marcel wrote in January 1999: "We can see multilingualism on the internet as a happy and irreversible inevitability. So we have to laugh at the doomsayers who only complain about the supremacy of English. Such supremacy is not wrong in itself, because it is mainly based on statistics (more PCs per inhabitant, more people speaking English, etc.). The answer is not to 'fight' English, much less whine about it, but to build more sites in other languages. As a translation service, we also recommend that websites be multilingual. The increasing number of languages on the internet is inevitable and can only boost multicultural exchanges. For this to happen in the best possible circumstances, we still need to develop tools to improve compatibility. Fully coping with accents and other characters is only one example of what can be done."

In 1998, Henri Slettenhaar was a professor at Webster University, Geneva, Swizerland. He insisted regularly on the need of bilingual websites, in the original language and in English. He wrote in December 1998: "I see multilingualism as a very important issue. Local communities that are on the web should principally use the local language for their information. If they want to present it to the world community as well, it should be in English too. I see a real need for bilingual websites. I am delighted there are so many offerings in the original language now. I much prefer to read the original with difficulty than getting a bad translation."

He added in August 1999: "There are two main categories in my opinion. The first one is the global outreach for business and information. Here the language is definitely English first, with local versions where appropriate. The second one is local information of all kinds in the most remote places. If the information is meant for people of an ethnic and/or language group, it should be in that language first with perhaps a summary in English. We have seen lately how important these local websites are — in Kosovo and Turkey, to mention just the most recent ones. People were able to get information about their relatives through these sites."

He added in August 2000: "Multilingualism has expanded greatly. Many e-commerce websites are multilingual now and there are companies that sell products which make localization possible (adaptation of websites to national markets)."

Non English-speaking users reached 50% in Summer 2000. According to the company Global Reach, they were 52.5% in Summer 2001, 57% in December 2001, 59.8% in April 2002, 64.4% in September 2003 (including 34.9% non-English-speaking Europeans and 29.4% Asians) and 64.2% in March 2004 (including 37.9% non-English-speaking Europeans and 33% Asians).

1999: OPEN EBOOK FORMAT

[Overview]

In 1999, there were nearly as many eBook formats as eBooks, with every company and organization creating its own format for its own eBook reader and its own electronic device. The publishing industry felt the need to work on a common format for eBooks and and published in September 1999 the first version of the Open eBook (OeB) format, an eBook format based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and defined by the Open eBook Publication Structure (OeBPS). The Open eBook Forum was created in January 2000 to develop the OeB format and OeBPS specifications. Since 2000, most eBook formats were derived from - or are compatible with the OeB format. In April 2005, the Open eBook Forum became the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), and the OeB format became the ePub format. The ePub format is one of the standards for the digital publishing industry.