there are so many
offerings in the original language now. I much prefer to read
the original with difficulty than getting 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."

Jean-Pierre Cloutier was the editor of "Chroniques de Cyberie",
a weekly French-language online report of internet news. Jean-
Pierre wrote in August 1999: "The web is going to grow in non-
English-speaking regions. So we have to take into account the
technical aspects of the medium if we want to reach these 'new'
users. I think it is a pity there are so few translations of
important documents and essays published on the web - from
English into other languages and vice versa. (...) In the same
way, the recent spreading of the internet in new regions raises
questions which would be good to read about. When will Spanish-
speaking communication theorists and those speaking other
languages be translated?"

Marcel Grangier is the head of the French Section of the Swiss
Federal Government's Central Linguistic Services, which means
he is 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