Let's be frank: The "e" in email really means English.
Despite all the Web talk of it being "World Wide," Anglo-centricity is the overriding Web paradigm.
But with some 109 million non-native English speakers making up 42 percent of the online population, according to Global Reach, something's gotta change.
At least one company, Slangsoft, thinks it has solved a major obstacle: importing any language's text into any Web-connected device, regardless of the operating system.
"Today, you only have language support with specific localized operating systems and keyboards," says Arie Mazur, CEO of Jerusalem-based Slangsoft. "Slangsoft's concept is to separate the language support from the OS ... to make the Web-based user interface support any language, regardless of the browser and the architecture of the application."
It's as difficult as it sounds, especially for non-Western languages.
"Multilingual Internet applications that need to accept input and display output in non-Roman scripts are especially difficult," says Ken Beesley, a member of the MultiLingual Theory and Technology Group at the Xerox Research Centre Europe. "Right-to-left Semitic scripts have traditionally required the use of particular customized browsers, plug-ins, or fonts."
With its Emule technology, Slangsoft has eliminated the need to download and install plug-ins or fonts. Emule is a small piece of Java code (a few hundred Ks) that can be integrated into any Web-based user interface. A virtual keyboard allows users to input text in 42 languages -- including Chinese, Japanese, and Hindi -- either by mouse-clicking on the screen display or by typing the corresponding keys on their own keyboard.
Search engine and Web directory Looksmart -- currently operating one non-English language site, Looksmart Netherlands -- recently announced that it will be implementing Emule, primarily to reach the Japanese-speaking market.
Another Slangsoft customer is the US Department of Defense's National Security Agency, which prefers to remain secretive right now about its plans for Emule.
Email is the obvious application. If Hotmail -- now available in seven languages, including Japanese for those with the right OS -- were to incorporate Emule, then anyone with a Hotmail account would be able to send email in 42 languages from any device.
Multilingual Web-based email is already out there. Everymail accepts input in 34 languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Thai, and Vietnamese, also via a virtual keyboard. Chinese and Japanese are on the way.
"The potential of the Web remains locked for the over 3 billion people who communicate in non-Roman script," says Dinesh Vaswani, CEO of eGlyphs, the developers of Everymail. "These emerging areas such as China, India, Japan, the Middle East, and Russia are also forecasted to be the fastest growing Internet markets in the next five years."
Ari Itzkowitz, an analyst with venture capital fund Tamar Technology Ventures, agrees: "The future growth markets of the world will be the billions of non-English speakers who are the 'Main Street' of our new techno-oriented society. Only applications and technologies that can span the language gap will enable penetration of this enormous marketplace."
To span that gap, eGlyphs recently launched Everychat for multilingual chat. Everyforum, a multilingual discussion forum, is next.
Among the companies helping to fill this multilingual space are Tegic, which supports 14 languages, and Zi Corporation. Both are focusing on text input to wireless devices full keyboards.
Zi's first product is aimed at the Chinese market. "Our core product, eZiText, is predictive language-input software, composed of a core engine and a set of linguistic databases," said Zi official Karen Attwell.
EZiText predicts what a word may be from its initial letters. This reduces the number of key strokes necessary -- a boon for mobile phone users. The technology supports 17 languages, with another 13 to be added by the end of 2000, Attwell said.
These technologies make the Web more Worldly, but rather less Wide if you don't speak 42 languages. Translation is the next piece of the puzzle, and this is something Internet users have been playing with for a while. AltaVista, for example, has been offering text or full Web page translation for free for a few years, using Systran's technology. But AltaVista's Babelfish frequently translates words from one language into gibberish, a common problem with many translation products.
Another free service, which is slightly more limited, is available at both Freetranslation.com and Transparent Language. And there are a wealth of companies, such as Lernout & Hauspie, offering translation software for a price.
