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

There are so few people in the U.S. interested in communicating in many languages — most Americans are still under the delusion that the rest of the world speaks English. However, here in Europe (I'm writing from France), the countries are small enough so that an international perspective has been necessary for centuries.

*Interview of July 23, 1999

= What practical suggestions do you have for the development of a multilingual website?

After a website's home page is available in several languages, the next step is the development of content in each language. A webmaster will notice which languages draw more visitors (and sales) than others, and these are the places to start in a multilingual Web promotion campaign. At the same time, it is always good to increase the number of languages available on a website: just a home page translated into other languages would do for a start, before it becomes obvious that more should be done to develop a certain language branch on a website.

= What is your best experience with the Internet?

Working in tandem with hundreds of people, without any pressure. It's a great life.

= And your worst experience?

Several times, I've published an online forum, in which several insulting individuals started sending nasty mail to the forum. It went out to hundreds of people, and then they started sending nasty mail back. It had a snowball effect, and I remember waking up one morning with over 4,000 messages to download. What a mess!

[FR] Bill Dunlap (Paris & San Francisco)