1994 > TRAVLANG, TRAVEL AND LANGUAGES
[Summary] Travlang was the first website to offer links to free basic translation dictionaries, intended for travelers and the general public. As a first step, Michael C. Martin created in 1994 a “Foreign Languages for Travelers” section on his university website when he was a physics student in New York. One year later, he launched Travlang, a site that quickly became a major portal for travel and languages, and won a best travel site award in 1997. Travlang was still maintained in 1998 by Michel C. Martin, now an researcher in experimental physics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. The section “Translating Dictionaries” gave access to free basic online dictionaries in a number of languages (Afrikaans, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish). Other sections offered links to language dictionaries, translation services and language schools.
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Travlang was the first website to offer links to free basic translation dictionaries, intended for travelers and the general public.
As a first step, Michael C. Martin created in 1994 a “Foreign Languages for Travelers” section on his university website when he was a physics student in New York. One year later, he launched Travlang, a site that quickly became a major portal for travel and languages, and won a best travel site award in 1997.
Travlang was still maintained in 1998 by Michel C. Martin, now an researcher in experimental physics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
The section “Foreign Languages for Travelers” gave links to online tools to learn 60 languages. The section “Translating Dictionaries” gave access to free basic online dictionaries in a number of languages (Afrikaans, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish). Other sections offered links to translation services, language schools and multilingual bookstores. People could also book their hotel, car or plane ticket, look up exchange rates and browse an index of 7,000 links to other language and travel sites.
Michael C. Martin wrote in August 1998: "I think the web is an ideal place to bring different cultures and people together, and that includes being multilingual. Our Travlang site is so popular because of this, and people desire to feel in touch with other parts of the world. (…) The internet is really a great tool for communicating with people you wouldn't have the opportunity to interact with otherwise. I truly enjoy the global collaboration that has made our Foreign Languages for Travelers pages possible."
What about the future? "I think computerized full-text translations will become more common, enabling a lot of basic communications with even more people. This will also help bring the internet more completely to the non-English speaking world."
Michael C. Martin sold Travlang to GourmetMarket.com in February 1999. GourmetMarket.com sold it to iiGroup in January 2000. By July 2000, the site was pulling in two million visitors a month.