Internet Multilinguality: Challenges, Dimensions, and Recommendations

Abstract

In the hay-days of the Internet boom, most software packages used on the Internet were in English, as were most Web sites and search engines. Since 2000, however, there have been more non-English-speaking users than English-speaking users on the Internet. Besides this language issue, there are other important issues involved in multilinguality on the Internet: cultural, technological, political, and legal issues. This chapter examines three challenges of Internet multilinguality: language barriers, cultural differences, and technological difficulties. This chapter also provides three recommendations for over-coming barriers created by language, culture, and technology.