Brian King, director of the WorldWide Language Institute (WWLI), explained in September 1998: "As well as the appropriate technology being available so that the non-English speaker can go, there is the impact of 'electronic commerce' as a major force that may make multilingualism the most natural path for cyberspace. A pull from non- English-speaking computer users and a push from technology companies competing for global markets has made localization a fast growing area in software and hardware development."
In 1998, the European Network in Language and Speech (ELSNET) was a network of more than 100 European academic and industrial institutions. ELSNET members intended to build multilingual speech and natural language systems with coverage of both spoken and written language. Steven Krauwer, coordinator of ELSNET, explained in September 1998: "As a European citizen I think that multilingualism on the web is absolutely essential, as in the long run I don't think that it is a healthy situation when only those who have a reasonable command of English can fully exploit the benefits of the web. As a researcher (specialized in machine translation) I see multilingualism as a major challenge: how can we ensure that all information on the web is accessible to everybody, irrespective of language differences."
Steven added in August 1999: "I've become more and more convinced we should be careful not to address the multilinguality problem in isolation. I've just returned from a wonderful summer vacation in France, and even if my knowledge of French is modest (to put it mildly), it's surprising to see that I still manage to communicate successfully by combining my poor French with gestures, facial expressions, visual clues and diagrams. I think the web (as opposed to old-fashioned text-only email) offers excellent opportunities to exploit the fact that transmission of information via different channels (or modalities) can still work, even if the process is only partially successful for each of the channels in isolation."
What practical solutions would he suggest for a truly multilingual web? "At the author end: better education of web authors to use combinations of modalities to make communication more effective across language barriers (and not just for cosmetic reasons). At the server end: more translation facilities à la AltaVista (quality not impressive, but always better than nothing). At the browser end: more integrated translation facilities (especially for the smaller languages), and more quick integrated dictionary lookup facilities."
Linguistic pluralism and diversity are everybody's business, as explained in a petition launched by the European Committee for the Respect of Cultures and Languages in Europe (ECRCLE) "for a humanist and multilingual Europe, rich of its cultural diversity": "Linguistic pluralism and diversity are not obstacles to the free circulation of men, ideas, goods and services, as would like to suggest some objective allies, consciously or not, of the dominant language and culture. Indeed, standardization and hegemony are the obstacles to the free blossoming of individuals, societies and the information economy, the main source of tomorrow's jobs. On the contrary, the respect for languages is the last hope for Europe to get closer to the citizens, an objective always claimed and almost never put into practice. The Union must therefore give up privileging the language of one group." The full text of the petition was available in the eleven official languages of the European Union. Among other things, the petition asked the revisors of the Treaty of the European Union to include the respect of national cultures and languages in the text of the treaty, and the national governments to "teach the youth at least two, and preferably three foreign European languages; encourage the national audiovisual and musical industries; and favour the diffusion of European works."
Henk Slettenhaar is a professor in communication technology at Webster University in Geneva, Switzerland. Henk is a trilingual European. He is Dutch, he teaches computer science in English, and he is fluent in French as a resident in neighboring France. He has regularly insisted 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 which are on the web should use the local language first and foremost for their information. If they want to be able to present their information to the world community as well, their information should be in English as well. I see a real need for bilingual websites. (…) As far as languages are concerned, I am delighted that there are so many offerings in the original languages now. I much prefer to read the original with difficulty than to get a bad translation."
Henk added in August 1999: "There are two main categories of websites 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."
Marcel Grangier was the head of the French Section of the Swiss Federal Government's Central Linguistic Services, which means he was in charge of organizing translations into French for the Swiss government. He 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."
Alain Bron, a consultant in information systems and a writer, wrote in January 1999: "Different languages will still be used for a long time to come and this is healthy for the right to be different. The risk is of course an invasion of one language to the detriment of others, and with it the risk of cultural standardization. I think online services will gradually emerge to get around this problem. First, translators will be able to translate and comment on texts by request, but mainly sites with a large audience will provide different language versions, just as the audiovisual industry does now."
Guy Antoine, founder of Windows on Haiti, a reference website about Haitian culture, wrote in November 1999: "It is true that for all intents and purposes English will continue to dominate the web. This is not so bad in my view, in spite of regional sentiments to the contrary, because we do need a common language to foster communications between people the world over. That being said, I do not adopt the doomsday view that other languages will just roll over in submission. Quite the contrary. The internet can serve, first of all, as a repository of useful information on minority languages that might otherwise vanish without leaving a trace. Beyond that, I believe that it provides an incentive for people to learn languages associated with the cultures about which they are attempting to gather information. One soon realizes that the language of a people is an essential and inextricable part of its culture. (…)