Waiting for explosion of multilingual Web

LIMOGES, FRANCE: According to the World Internet Users and Population Stats, Asia accounts for 38.4 percent of all users, followed by Europe at 26.4 percent and North America at 18 percent. Among the top 10 languages used, English continues to lead, as of now, accounting for 30.1 percent of all Internet users, followed by Chinese -- 14.7 percent, Spanish 9 percent, Japanese 6.9 percent, and French 5.1 percent, respectively.

However, if the language growth on the Internet is taken as a parameter, Arabic leads with a whopping 1,575.9 percent growth over the period 2000-2007. It is followed by Portuguese, Chinese, French and Spanish, with English being a distant sixth!

Speaking at the ongoing WIF 2008 in the city, Anil Kumar R, Senior VP, Cybermedia India Online Ltd. (CIOL), he highlighted the fact that the Web was catching up in India -- using three screens.

He said: "In India, the Web is catching up, second and third screens. The first screen being the TV, the second screen is the PC, and mobile devices are the third. The Net usage in India has grown from about 5 million users in 2000 to over 60 million users. This is said to be exploding by a whopping 1,000 percent and more! Yet, even at this rate of growth Net penetration is merely 5.3 percent, according to Internet World Stats."

There is immense scope and potential for Web in India. A diverse and multilingual country like ours needs local language content. Some steps have been taken -- in the public sphere, thanks to C-DAC; in private, and there's http://www.raftaar.com as an example. Credit/debit cards usage have further made the India web market a vibrant one.

There is clear indication that Web is becoming more multilingual. For instance, among Alexa's Top 100 sites – several are in other languages, such as www.google.fr – in France; www.baidu.com – in China; and www.yahoo.co.jp -- in Japan. Even Yahoo and Google are available in multiple languages. Fair indication that the days of searching only in English is behind us!

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Some popular sites in other languages include www.qq.com; www.sina.com.cn; www.51.com (China social networking site); http://www.fotka.pl (in Poland); www.baidu.com; www.sohu.com; and so on. Search engines and social networking sites are becoming hot! Even bloggers are able to blog in local languages. Evidently, there are lots of choices for local languages to prosper!

Major sites like Google.com and Guruji.com allow search in multiple local (Indian) languages like Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati, etc.

China has become a large Internet economy because of the content availability and accessibility in local language. If India were to grow at the same rate, it needs to focus more on vernacular. It is only then that we would have truly empowered the Indian Internet users.

Consider these stats! Over 500 million people speak Hindi in India and abroad. The total number of people who understand the language is estimated to be over 800 million. Over 200 million people in India gaze at Hindi language as their mother tongue and over 300 million use it as a second language.

Several national newspapers have Hindi editions; for example, Dainik Jaagran. Besides, Raftaar.com is a boon for Hindi-speaking people!

Some other interesting examples from India include -- www.dosai.com – Search Internet in Tamil; www.teluguplanet.com – Telugu search engine; http://www.kannadaworld.com – Search in Kannada; www.sahiti.org – Search in Telugu, Kannada, and Hindi; http://bhramara.in – Search in Kannada Hindi/English; www.punjabiemail.com – Send emails in Punjabi, etc!

Design has been a common denominator. These would include factors such as Web pages loading easily, pleasing look and feel, ease of use, and smooth navigation. The Web presents a huge opportunity for designers. It will be an enabler of huge talent pool of designers. Designers/artists get trained to use Web-based tools.

According to Kumar, WIF 2008 presents a great platform for tapping the global design talent pool. As it is, global teams are participating at the event. Their talents can be utilized to develop multilingual sites and great designs.

Citing India as a leading talent pool for Web developers and designers; he urged the international community to make use of the India opportunity. And the multilingual Web!