n or oral machine translation systems? It's hard to imagine having
in the near future the means to translate nuances of thought unique to a given
country. We'd have to translate more than the language, and set up bridges to
convey feelings. Unless everthing is standardized by globalisation. So I think
the real issue is a multicultural Internet.

= What is your best experience with the Internet?

When we passed the 10.000 subscribers' mark for LMB Actu, at the beginning of
1998.

= And your worst experience?

The time when we made a mistake in Internet Actu and angry messages from
subscribers began pouring in just 10 minutes later. We all started panicking
because LMB Actu had just gone private and FTPress, the new company, relied
solely on its successor, Internet Actu. If we'd lost a lot of subscribers,
we'd've been finished. But in the end, all the reaction allowed us to start a
column for readers which was very popular. Mistakes often turn out to be
beneficial, as soon as you admit them openly. These exchanges establish links
between readers and authors.

ROBERT WARE (Colorado)

#Creator of OneLook Dictionaries, a fast finder of words in 650 dictionaries

*Interview of September 2, 1998

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

On the personal side, I was almost entirely in contact with people who spoke one
language and did not have much incentive to expand language abilities. Being in
contact with the entire world has a way of changing that. And changing it for
the better! I have been slow to start including non-English dictionaries (partly
because I am monolingual). But you will now find a few included.

An interesting thing happened earlier and I think I learned something from it.

In 1994, I was working for a college and trying to install a software package on
a particular type of computer. I located a person who was working on the same
problem and we began exchanging email. Suddenly, it hit me... the software was
written only 30 miles away but I was getting help from a person half way around
the world. Distance and geography no longer mattered!

OK, this is great! But what is it leading to? I am only able to communicate in
English but, fortunately, the other person could use English as well as German
which was his mother tongue. The Internet has removed one barrier (distance) but
with that comes the barrier of language.

It seems that the Internet is moving people in two quite different