Multilingual Publishing on the Internet

An Asian Perspective

"The big driver of the Internet in India will be local content," says Vinnie Mehta, deputy director of India's MAIT (Manufacturer's Association for Information Technology). His concern reflects that of Internet analysts, forecasters, and practitioners across several countries where languages other than English are spoken.

Some 6,700 languages are spoken in 228 countries, but English still represents about 60% of the entire world online content, European languages about 30%, and Asian languages another 14%. (The figures add up to over 100% because of the existence of multilingual sites.) The people who do not access the Internet in English are the fastest-growing group of people online today, according to figures from UNESCO.

But exploitation of the Net in Asian countries like India will only be possible through attempts to include local content in the regional language on the Internet, said Dr. M. Anandakrishnan, Vice-Chairman, Tamil Nadu Council for Higher Education, at the annual summit of the Asian Media and Information Centre in Chennai.

A need for localisation

There are five key drivers of multilingual publishing on the Internet: a need for localisation, online news publishing, government concern, education, and electronic commerce.

Though the original and key push for the Internet market comes from the U.S., the percentage of U.S. Internet users as a percentage of worldwide users is dropping: from 65% in 1994 to 55% in 1997, and further down to 40% in 2000. What this means is that the proportion of non-U.S., non-English-speaking Internet users is growing rapidly.

Hence many U.S. companies are realising the need to publish Web content in languages other than English - Intel and Federal Express being two good examples. Others include Cisco (with online content in 14 languages for 49 countries) and Netscape (with over 10 languages).

Governments from Japan and Singapore to New Zealand and Andhra Pradesh are venturing into multilingual Web publishing, with varying degrees of success.

New Zealand hopes to attract tourists from Japan by publishing country-specific information in Japanese on its Web site. Information related to health services is available on the Singapore government Web site, in English and Chinese. The Andhra Pradesh government Web site has a message from the Chief Minister in Telugu.

Japan's Ministry for International Trade and Industry has set aside an anuual sum of 2.7 billion yen for Internet ventures incuding publishing of local content on the Web.

Publishing online content in non-English languages is easiest for those languages which use the Roman alphabet - for instance, Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia. Thus, newspapers like Berita Herian in Malaysia and Pikiran Rakyat in Indonesia are able to easily avail themselves of the latest in Web authorware innovations, as well as local search engines and customisation features.

Tools for multilingual publishing

The technical issues are more complicated, of course, for languages like Korean, Hindi and Arabic, especially there is no agreed-upon standard for computer representation of languages like Hindi.

In the area of education, numerous universities and cultural organisations around the world have launched initiatives to develop tools for multilingual publishing and give grants to local content publishers. Leading IT giants like Microsoft, for instance, are developing editions of their Encarta CD-ROM encyclopeadia in multiple languages; the Japanese edition now comes with a Web site for online updates.

The drive for multilingual publishing is also coming from non-traditional media organisations like online search engine services, Web directories, and new media companies. For instance, the popular Web index Yahoo now has incarnations in French and Japanese as well, with online news provided by news organisations in those countries. The Altavista search engine can handle search queries in over a dozen languages.

Other companies like Pointcast, a Webcasting or "push" service provider for online news and information, have been working on a Japanese language and Chinese language channel as well. Pointcast is obtaining revenues for its online services from global and regional players like IBM and Acer.

One of the key challenges facing the Asian language Web is the lack of standards for representation, fonts and keyboards for many Asian languages. As a result, content often has to be published in multiple versions. For instance, the Yahoo! sites in Chinese are published both in GB code (simplified Chinese) and Big 5 (traditional Chinese).

Governments in Indian states like Tamil Nadu have only recently agreed upon standards for computer representation of Tamil content, a move which culminated at the recent TamilNet '99 conference in Chennai.

Many Asian countries - like China, India and Vietnam -- also stand to gain from increased local language publishing by tapping into their vast diaspora populations.

Tamil speaking population worldwide has received a boost in cyberspace

For instance, the 75 million-strong Tamil speaking population worldwide has received a boost in cyberspace thanks to a $1.25 million local language initiative launched by the Tamil Nadu government to promote online content and institutional backing.

The initiative, announced by Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi, includes seed support for a state-level Tamil Internet Research Centre and a World Tamil University.

The Tamil Nadu government is also working closely with the governments and IT sectors of Singapore, Malaysia and Sri Lanka on such Tamil language initiatives; Tamil is an official language in these countries as well.

According to Manoj Annadurai, a speaker at the TamilNet '99 conference, less than two per cent of Tamil Nadu's population uses computers, and most of this usage is in English.

The government's support for online initiatives and keyboard standardisation drives in the local language is expected to be instrumental for tapping into Tamil-speaking rural and home markets in India and the Tamil diaspora.

Many lucrative opportunities are thus opening for Asian Web publishers to tap into local and global Internet opportunities from alliances with new media players, resources from cultural and governmental organisations, and other multilingual publishing ventures.

Madanmohan Rao is a researcher and technology journalist in Bangalore, India.

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