Our website was first conceived as an Intranet service for translators in Switzerland, who often deal with the same kind of material as the federal government's translators. Some parts of it are useful to any translators, wherever they are. The electronic dictionaries (Dictionnaires électroniques) are only one section of the website. Other sections deal with administration, law, the French language and general information. The site also hosts the pages of the Conference of Translation Services of European States (COTSOES).
= What exactly is your professional activity?
I'm head of the French Section of the Swiss Federal Government's Central Linguistic Services, which means I'm in charge of organising translation matters for all the linguistic services of the Swiss government.
= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?
There's a problem here and the solution isn't obvious. It's a pity the battle against this kind of fraud will eventually justify, along with other abuses, a "Web police," which sadly is very far from the spirit in which the Web was created.
= How do you see the growth of a multilingual Web?
We now have a multilingual Internet. We have to build it up and ensure it's easy to access, which'll probably take a bit longer.
BARBARA GRIMES [EN, FR]
[EN] Barbara Grimes (Hawaii)
#Editor of Ethnologue: Languages of the World