Miltilingual Voices Call for a Poliglot Internet at IGF

For the World Wide Web to deserve its title, many other languages must find their way to the information superhighway.

That's the conclusion by several speakers at the Internet Governance Forum that is being held in Hyderabad, India.

Here is from IDG News Service:

"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), on Wednesday.

Besides local content and software, search engines must also support multiple languages, as search is often the way people access the Web, she added.

Written English, however, has taken strong Internet roots, and even in developing countries, this language has become the preferred option for both developers and users.

The demand for content and tools in local languages is not very high in India, said Ajit Balakrishnan, chairman and CEO of Rediff.com, an Indian portal. Higher education in India is mainly in English which has also emerged as an "aspirational " language after the boom in business process outsourcing in India, he added.

The IGF should focus on the spoken Internet, on speech-to-text languages, because that is the future of the Internet, he added.

Speakers also brought up the issue of widely available connectivity offering the Google model, which offers a valuable service for free by getting its revenue from other viable sources. But to many a big problem solver for access and connectivity is competition.

Competition drives down costs, gives customers choice, and improves access in various markets including developing countries, said Peter Hellmonds, head of corporate social responsibility at Nokia Siemens Networks.

Access is not only about rolling out networks, but creating the awareness of the technology and provide incentives for people to get on the Internet, he said. Applications that address the needs of various sections of the populations, including rural areas have to be also available, he added.