English as lingua franca

Posted on December 23, 2007 by Martin Zagorsek

One of the strange side-effects of the globalization of the Internet is that it’s exaggerating the apparent importance of the English language. It only takes a few hours in any non-English speaking country to be reminded that the vast majority of people in the world can’t speak more than a few words (if any) of English.

So why then are so many people acting as if English is the universal language of the Internet? From Al Jazeera and Haaretz in the Middle East to Nikkei and Xinhua in the Far East, it’s become common for news organizations to offer extensive web sites in English even though they have little or no English programming in print or video form.


haaretz English as lingua franca

What’s ironic about this trend is that it comes in the face of evidence that, as Internet access spreads globally, the percentage of Internet users that speak (or read) English is surpassed English as the top language in the blogosphere.

So what’s an Internet strategist to do? There’s the obvious advice to figure out whether your target market is really global - do you care whether people who don’t speak English can access your content? If you’re selling stuff only within the US or UK, maybe you can live without it, but for many business models that’s no longer true. The other thing to do is to keep an eye on automated translation software. While the current generation still produces some pretty goofy results, it’s only a matter of time before it improves. If it gets there fast enough, the whole issue might become moot.. but I wouldn’t bet on it.

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