I think this is part of early teething troubles. Remember, the web is still
a baby learning to walk and talk. Since this technology has been developed
so fast in the English-speaking world it's natural really that it is
dominated by a single language. But I think that the ecology of the web will
quickly evolve towards a more multilingual environment. Audio should help
too.
Re the Dawn Quilt and the English language - it was a British Council
project and most BC projects have traditionally been in English because
after all the remit of the Council is to promote English culture. This is
changing too though and I think we will see the BC becoming more open to
multilingualism.
Btw we recently completed another quilt - The Road Quilt - with writing and
photography from Russia and Central Europe. In English only too, but still
very evocative... http://www.literaturequilt.org/roadquilt/
sue
>
> sam miller wrote:
>
>> I have a question for the group. Over recent years, I've spent a lot of
>> time
>> helping with the launch of websites in several South Asian languages. It
>> has
>> been a struggle - battling glyphs and Unicode, font downloads and embeds.
>> And I've in turn been a bit astonished by the lack of interest in the
>> subject from people I think of as technophiles. Have I been unlucky, and am
>> I being unfair - but are most technophiles also linguaphobes?
>
> Hi Sam -
>
> I share your feelings about the general lack of linguistic diversity -
> in my experience most people are linguaphobes, both technophiles and
> technophobes. Access to machine translation may improve as the
> technology develops, but at the moment it is far too inaccurate to be
> really useful.
>
> From the writer's perspective, it can be difficult (unless you are
> skilled in other languages) to provide translations. Even if you can
> translate, there are the problems you mentioned - alternative fontsets
> etc. - to contend with. However, there are plenty of examples of
> multiple language pieces, websites and other resources to be found - for
> example the Gangart Awards http://www.gangart.com/awards/ is for
> bilingual or multilingual/ multicultural arts & culture sites - but this
> is not the norm...
>
> chris
|