Читать книгу An Introduction to Intercultural Communication - Fred E. Jandt - Страница 52

The Internet originated in the English-speaking world. Computers are English-oriented. Early computer systems were limited to the characters in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), making, for example, texts transmitted unaltered from francophone keyboards appear as garbage on English-favoring keyboards; Netscape and Java are in English; search engines were developed in and for English. At its origin, the language of the Internet was English. But as Figure 1.3 shows, the Internet is now truly worldwide. That suggests two questions:

 Will the Internet encourage the worldwide dominance of English? Will the Internet, then, become a major force blending the world’s population together?

 Will Internet users favor native languages, and over time will the dominance of English diminish? Will the divisions of language groups force the Internet to use other languages, perpetuating divisions based on existing language use lines?

We can’t fully answer these questions by examining the language abilities of Internet users. There are more Internet users worldwide who can speak and read English than there are Internet users in predominantly English-speaking countries. While these multilingual users might be able to use English, they might also prefer to use their first language. Figure 1.4 shows the percentages of websites using various content languages as of early 2020.

Figure 1.4 Language of Internet Content, 2020

Source: Q-Success (2020).

Note: Percentages are current as of February 20, 2020.

Perhaps the answer to the questions above is yes: At least in the immediate future, English may continue to be the dominant language on the Internet, but at the same time, technology is supporting the use of local languages worldwide. Additionally, translation technology will make it possible for everyone to use any preferred language and be understood by anyone. Google Translate provides text translations for over 100 languages, including Chinese characters. Translations also are built into the Chrome web browser.