Internet.

= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?

Copyright in its traditional context doesn't exist any more. Authors have to get
used to a new situation: the total freedom of the flow of information. The
original content is like a fingerprint: it can't be copied. So it will survive
and flourish.

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

Technology may solve the problem. May the best one win. The Internet really took
off in the US because of a revolutionary concept: only one language -- English.
The "politically correct" movement for mandatory multilingual teaching in US
schools and respect for the various subcultures is a disaster for the future of
this country (as it already is in Europe). Individuals have to decide at home if
they want to learn another language.

= What is your best experience with the Internet?

Four years ago I published a few issues of a free English newsletter on the
Internet. It had about 10 readers per issue until the day (in January 1996) when
the electronic version of Wired Magazine created a link to it. In one week I got
about 100 e-mails, some from French readers of my book La vallee du risque -
Silicon Valley (published by Plon, Paris, at the end of 1990), who were happy to
find me again.

= And your worst experience?

The Internet is a medium and, like any medium, can be lead to evil. The shooting
spree by a day trader in Atlanta in July 1999. Pornography. The unrestricted
online sale of guns. Junk mail.

MARCEL GRANGIER (Bern)

#Head of the French Section of the Swiss Federal Government's Central Linguistic
Services

*Interview of January 14, 1999 (original interview in French)

= How did using the Internet change your professional life?

To work without the Internet is simply impossible now. Apart from all the tools
used (e-mail, the electronic press, services for translators), the Internet is
for us a vital and endless source of information in what I'd call the
"non-structured sector" of the Web. For example, when the answer to a
translation problem can't be found on websites presenting information in an
organized way, in most cases search engines allow us to find the missing link
somewhere on the network.

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

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.