2000: INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE IN MANY LANGUAGES
= [Overview]
2000 was a turning point for a multilingual internet, both for its content and its users. In summer 2000, non-English-speaking users reached 50%. This percentage went on to increase steadily: 52.5% in summer 2001, 57% in December 2001, 59.8% in April 2002, 64.4% in September 2003 - with 34.9% non-English- speaking Europeans and 29.4% Asians - and 64.2% in March 2004 - with 37.9% non-English-speaking Europeans and 33% Asians (source: Global Reach). The internet is also a good tool for minority languages, as stated by Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle, who teaches computing at the Institute Sabhal Mór Ostaig, located on the Island of Skye, in Scotland. Caoimhín also maintains the college website, which is the main site worldwide with information on Scottish Gaelic, with a bilingual (English, Gaelic) list of European minority languages. He wrote in May 2001: "Students do everything by computer, use Gaelic spell- checking, a Gaelic online terminology database. There are more hits on our website. There is more use of sound. Gaelic radio (both Scottish and Irish) is now available continuously worldwide via the internet. A major project has been the translation of the Opera web-browser into Gaelic - the first software of this size available in Gaelic."
= "Language nations"
At first, the internet was nearly 100% English. Born in the United States, it spread in North America before taking over the whole planet. Then people from all continents began connecting to the internet and posting webpages in their own languages. In the 1990s, the percentage of English decreased from nearly 100% to 85% (reached in 1997 or 1998, depending on the sources).
In 1997, Babel - a joint initiative from Alis Technologies (language translation services) and the Internet Society - ran the first major study relating to distribution of languages on the web. 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 July 1998, according to Global Reach, a company specializing in international online marketing, the fastest growing groups of internet users were non-English-speaking: Spanish-speaking, 22.4%, Japanese-speaking, 12.3%; German-speaking, 14%; and French-speaking, 10% - with 56 million non-English-speaking users. More than 80% of all webpages were still in English, whereas only 6% of the world population spoke English as a native language (16% spoke Spanish).
Randy Hobler was a consultant in internet marketing for Globalink, a company specializing in language translation software and services. He 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."
Randy also brought up the concept of "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."
Robert Ware created OneLook Dictionaries in April 1996, as a "fast finder" of words in hundreds of online dictionaries. He wrote about an experience he had in 1994, that showed the internet could promote both a common language and multilingualism: "In 1994, I was working for a college and trying to install a software package on a particular type of computer. I located a person who was working on the same problem and we began exchanging email. Suddenly, it hit me… the software was written only 30 miles away but I was getting help from a person half way around the world. Distance and geography no longer mattered! OK, this is great! But what is it leading to? I am only able to communicate in English but, fortunately, the other person could use English as well as German which was his mother tongue. The internet has removed one barrier (distance) but with that comes the barrier of language. It seems that the internet is moving people in two quite different directions at the same time. The internet (initially based on English) is connecting people all around the world. This is further promoting a common language for people to use for communication. But it is also creating contact between people of different languages and creates a greater interest in multilingualism. A common language is great but in no way replaces this need. So the internet promotes both a common language *and* multilingualism. The good news is that it helps provide solutions. The increased interest and need is creating incentives for people around the world to create improved language courses and other assistance, and the internet is providing fast and inexpensive opportunities to make them available."