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Multilingual web vital for next Billion people to access it
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 03 December 2008, 20:30 IST |
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Bangalore: To make the web available to the next billion people, organizations involved with the internet suggest that it should support large number of languages. "When we talk about Internet for all, we have to go beyond the people who speak English," said Manal Ismail, Vice Chair of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Infact, multiple languages should be supported at all levels including content, hardware, software and internationalized domain names. Moreover, even the search engines should offer multilingual search options, besides the local content and software. Infact, it is also pinpointed that there should be a focus on the spoken internet, on speech-to-text languages, as it is seen to be the future for the web. Kiran Karnik, member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Indian Prime Minister also said that connectivity, affordability, and utility are key to taking the Internet to the next one billion people.
However, during the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Hyderabad, there were significant doubts that arose on the suggestion for the internet. "The demand for content and tools in local languages is not very high in India. Higher education in India is mainly in English which has also emerged as an inspirational language after the boom in business process outsourcing (BPO) in India," said Ajit Balakrishnan, Chairman and CEO of Rediff.com, an Indian portal.