multilingual aspects of internet governance tatiana ershova institute of the information society...

Multilingual Aspects of Internet Governance

Tatiana ErshovaInstitute of the Information Society

Moscow, Russia

Linguistic Diversity13 November 20072nd Internet Governance ForumRio de Janeiro, Brazil

2nd IGF, Rio de Janeiro, 13 November 20072

WSIS Outcome Documents

Geneva Declaration states that– creation of content in diverse languages and formats has a high priority in

building an inclusive Information Society– promotion and preservation of diverse languages will further enrich the

Information Society Geneva Plan of Action encourages

– governments to design policies to promote the production of content suited to the linguistic

and cultural context of the users to support local content development, translation and adaptation

– all stakeholders to provide content that is relevant to the languages of individuals in the

Information Society to foster the creation of varied local and national content, including that in the

language of users


Tunis Agenda and Synthesis Paper for the 2nd IGF Meeting

Tunis Agenda includes– “Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity

and local content” in its Action lines list

Synthesis Paper stresses importance of promoting and protecting locally developed content language communities in developing multilingual content


Problems to Consider

The number of non-English speaking Internet users has globally grown to 470 million since the 1990s (roughly two-thirds of all Internet users - CyberAtlas, 2003)

4 broad categories of problems are being considered in the context of the multilingual Internet :

– adaptations of writing systems in online environments– social interpretations of, and attitudes toward, such adaptation– language choice in multilingual contexts– gender and language dynamics in computer-mediated

communication in non-English-speaking cultures

[Introduction: The Multilingual Internet / by Brenda Danet & Susan C. Herring, 2003]


Adaptations of Writing Systems

Accommodating to multilingualism on the Internet requires that the writing systems of the world’s languages be representable in digital form

– speakers of many languages initially had to cope with limitations of the ASCII character set when trying to communicate online

– progress is due to the development of Unicode Online communication is dependent on

– whether those writing systems can enter their contributions in the language and script desired

– whether recipients of messages have the technical access to receive them, and the literacy skills to read them

The latter being a socio-economic problem


Adaptations of Writing Systems: Informal Cultures

Online communication entailed the development of informal written cultures with a number of specific linguistic and interactional features:

– eccentric spelling (“padonki” sub-culture language in Russia)

– the controversial use of the roman alphabet in online communication (Greeklish in Greece)

– innovative punctuation (in Japan)– abbreviations– rebus writing– smileys– etc.


Attitudes toward New Adaptations

Three different trends– retrospective trend – new kinds of adaptations (incl. foreign-

language influence) are seen as a threat to the national language and cultural heritage

– prospective trend – new adaptations are regarded as a transitory phenomenon which will become negligible due to technological advances

– resistive trend – points to the negative effects of globalization, and relates new adaptations to other communication and sociocultural practices


Language Choice Challenge

There is a need for lingua franca, that is why– world actively uses English and large regional languages such as

Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Hindi– English, which is no one's native language is sometimes preferred

in multilingual countries by specific communities (e.g. in Switzerland among medical students)

Machine translation vs lingua franca– may offer a promise of enabling smaller languages to survive

Google Translation, Columbus, ACCENT (Israel), ABBYY software (Russia), Lingvo (large hyper-text interactive dictionary), WebTranSite and others

– can be used to avoid political problems (e.g. in Spain where the relationship between Catalan and Spanish is politically complex, everyone can communicate in his or her own preferred language)


Language Choice Challenge: Sophisticated Means

Automatic forming and translation of keywords in querying systems Means of automatic speech processing

– speech dialogue systems– oral vocabularies & translators– dictating machines– machines simulating a human voice– individual speech passports– systems of multilingual speech interpreters

Algorithmic analysis of the deep language structures– attempts have been made to create systems of artificial intelligence

that would allow conducting deep analyses of historical roots and evolution of language structures and human cognition processes


Need for Sociolinguistic Research

More contexts must be studied before generalization becomes possible in terms of language choice

Machine translation algorithms intended to work on the Internet must take into account actual communication patterns

Answers to the following have to be found:– How, if at all, do norms of communication differ among

speakers of other languages conversing online? – Does the tendency toward informality conflict with local

norms regarding formality and status differences, and if so, how is this conflict resolved?


Linguistic Diversity: an Issue for Russia

Russian Federation is a multi-national state:– Over 180 ethnic groups with unique cultures

and traditions live on its territory Citizens of Russia speak more than 150

languages– The majority of these languages is possessed by

less than 10 thousand people– Many of these languages are on the verge of

disappearance



Russia’s population is 142,4 million, but there are only 8 languages spoken by more than 1 million people:

– Russian (the overwhelming majority) – English (around 7 million) – Tatar (5,4 million) – German (2,9 million) – Ukrainian (1,8 million) – Bashkir (1,4) – Chechen and Chuvash (1,3 million each)



24 languages have an official status in RF:– Russian is a state language on the entire territory– 23 more languages are state languages of the

‘subjects of federation’ Abazin, Adygei, Altai, Bashkir, Buryat, Ingush,

Kabardian & Circassian, Kalmyk, Balkarian, Karachai & Balkarian, Komi, Nogai, Mari, Moksha, Ossetin, Tatar, Tuvinian, Udmurt, Khakass, Chechen, Chuvash, Erzya, Yakut



Russia’s languages belong to 14 linguistic families– Indo-European, Altaic, Ural, Yukagir & Chuvan,

Cartvelic, Abkhazian & Adygei, Nakh & Daghestan, Sino-Tibetan, Semitic, Eskimo-Aleutian, Chukchi-Kamchatka, Yenisei, Austro-Asian, Ainic

– plus Nivkh language (isolated)


Handling the Linguistic Diversity Issue in Russia

Main activities aimed at preserving the linguistic diversity are concentrated in the ‘subjects of federation’

– regional programs are being established and implemented– work related to languages documenting is being conducted

in higher education and research institutions– some official web sites of national republics are maintained

both in Russian and national languages[Develoopment of Multilingualism in the Internet / E. Kuzmin, E. Plys, 2007]


Handling the Linguistic Diversity Issue in Russia

Regional activities to preserve the linguistic diversity – electronic training aids, textbooks and dictionaries

are being published– online forums are being offered for the

communication in different languages– media resources are presented online, radio

broadcasting is provided in the languages of many nations of Russia


Linguistic Diversity Challenges for Russia

In spite of the efforts undertaken the languages spoken by the peoples of Russia are poorly presented in the Internet

The main reason for that is lack of awareness and, consequently

– inadequate financing– insufficient training of specialists that would be able to

create information resources for the Internet and to develop standardized fonts for local languages, vocabularies, search instruments, etc.


Commitment of the Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Program

Russian IFAP started a research aimed at:– revealing to the most extent possible the circle of

government departments at different levels, organizations and specialists dealing with the linguistic diversity problems in the Internet, establishing contacts with them

– defining the level of completeness of the representation of Russia’s nations in the Russian segment of the Internet

– listing the measures undertaken in Russia in relation to the development of linguistic diversity in the Internet


Commitment of the Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for Alк l Program

Russian IFAP started a research aimed at: – exposing the activities directed to the

development of e-translators and e-dictionaries for Russia’s languages

– studying the situation with the creation of standardized character sets for Russia’s languages

– finding out what is being done in the area of adaptation of search engines for a full value search in the Internet


Contact Information

Phone: +7 (495) 625-17-27 Fax: +7 (495) 625-19-28 E-mail: [email protected] URL: http://www.iis.ru