ese or Spanish, and vice versa. Non-English-
speaking users were thrilled. The software was developed by Systran, a
pioneer company specializing in machine translation. Later on, other
translation software was developed by Alis Technologies, Globalink,
Lernout & Hauspie, Softissimo, Wordfast and Trados, with free and/or
paid versions available on the web.

Brian King, director of the WorldWide Language Institute (WWLI),
brought up the concept of "linguistic democracy" in September 1998:
"Whereas 'mother-tongue education' was deemed a human right for every
child in the world by a UNESCO report in the early 1950s, 'mother-
tongue surfing' may very well be the Information Age equivalent. If the
internet is to truly become the Global Network that it is promoted as
being, then all users, regardless of language background, should have
access to it. To keep the internet as the preserve of those who, by
historical accident, practical necessity, or political privilege,
happen to know English, is unfair to those who don't."

Geoffrey Kingscott was the managing director of Praetorius, a language
consultancy in applied languages. He wrote in September 1998: "Because
the salient characteristics of the web are the multiplicity of site
generators and the cheapness of message generation, as the web matures
it will in fact promote multilingualism. The fact that the web
originated in the USA means that it is still predominantly in English
but this is only a temporary phenomenon. If I may explain this further,
when we relied on the print and audiovisual (film, television, radio,
video, cassettes) media, we had to depend on the information or
entertainment we wanted to receive being brought to us by agents
(publishers, television and radio stations, cassette and video
producers) who have to subsist in a commercial world or -- as in the
case of public service broadcasting -- under severe budgetary
restraints. That means that the size of the customer-base is all-
important, and determines the degree to which languages other than the
ubiquitous English can be accommodated. These constraints disappear
with the web. To give only a minor example from our own experience, we
publish the print version of Language Today [a magazine for linguists,
published by Praetorius] only in English, the common denominator of our
readers. When we use an article which was originally in a language
other than English, or report an interview which was conducted in