Parlez-Vous Internet?

Americans had been using e-mail for quite some time when the French government decided last May that the official translation for e-mail would be mel. This convenient expression sounds just like “mail” with a French accent and fits perfectly on a business card under the word tel, for “telephone.”

But when it comes to “browsing the Net,” the language policy is not as clear. In the French-speaking province of Quebec, for example, where the percentage of people who browse is much higher than in France, some may call their tool butineur, some call it fureteur or even navigateur.

Others just call it a “browser.”

Americans tend to see the French sensitivities as silly, but there’s nothing trivial about the problem of making the Internet--the famously “global” network--something more than an English-only medium.

Until recently, this wasn’t much of an issue. The Internet was born in the United States, and the few non-Americans who had an interest in it or access to it tended to be English-speaking elites.

But that’s changing fast. And as non-English-speaking nations and individuals race to get onto the Net, a whole new industry is developing to build the software, services and translation tools needed to allow everyone to talk to one another.

The range of products and services required to make the Net multilingual is vast. On a simple level, there’s the need for software and e-mail programs that can handle different alphabets and character sets.

While major software firms have long translated their programs into many languages--a process known as “software localization”--the Net introduces a new wrinkle: Netscape and Microsoft, for example, have versions of their browsers available in many languages, but users are forced to pick their alphabet or character type. You can’t send an e-mail message in Chinese, for example, if you’re using the English version of the software.

Zi Corp. in Calgary has developed e-mail software that solves that problem without often-cumbersome plug-ins. The software allows users to choose from among three Chinese character sets--those used in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China--when writing, whereas most other solutions offer only two.

But the biggest challenge in breaking down language barriers on the Net lies in developing processes and technologies that can provide rapid, accurate translation of Web pages, electronic databases, advertising copy, e-mail messages and even the chatter in a chat room.

The Holy Grail is fully automated translation, where one could, say, type an e-mail in one language and have a correspondent across the ocean receive it in another.

That goal remains elusive: The often-illogical subtleties of linguistic expression make translation a difficult task for computers, and even the most sophisticated programs still make errors that would be obvious to a first-year language student.

There are a few automatic translation products for consumers on the market. A Fairfax, Va., company called Globalink sells a product called Globalink E-mail Translator for Eudora, which translates e-mail messages automatically in five West European languages. Transparent Language in Hollis, N.H., has a product called Easy Translator that translates Web sites as well as mail.

But these programs provide, at best, a rough translation, and sometimes yield egregious errors that can make them risky to use for anything other than recreational purposes.

Other companies, including Santa Clara, Calif.-based Logos, one of the pioneers in the field, and La Jolla-based Systran, have developed machine-translation solutions aimed at the booming corporate market for language services. They’re often used as part of a process that also includes human translators.

“Machine translation is appropriate in certain limited circumstances, but it’s not yet ready for widespread use,” says Steven Fingerhood, chairman and chief executive of a San Francisco translation service company called Direct Language Communications.

Fingerhood says there are other tools that are having a more immediate impact on the translation world, including what’s known as “translation memory.” That’s based on the simple concept of storing translations for reuse, so that a given text never needs to be translated more then once.

Direct Language has developed its own tools for facilitating different pieces of the process, such as software that can automatically extract text from Web documents and then reinsert the human-translated text into the original format.

Indeed, there is a host of hybrid approaches that use technology to support human translation. A number of mostly small companies, including many in Southern California, now broker human translation services via the Internet: Customers send a Web text or an e-mail, and the company then routes it to either an in-house translator or a freelance contractor--promising in some cases to turn it around within hours.

Montreal-based Alis Technology has developed a product called Alis Translation Solution, which company founder Jean Bourbonnais calls “tele-translation middleware.”

ATS connects companies that need translation to people or computers that can offer translation. ATS can work, for example, with machine translation software developed by Systran, or with traditional translation services such as those provided by Berlitz and many other companies.

The Los Angeles Times, in what’s believed to be a first in the newspaper industry, announced last month that it will use ATS to translate portions of its Internet edition into Spanish and French and eventually Japanese.

The Times project will use fully automatic translation, but will initially focus only on tourist information and entertainment listings. Information of that type has a limited vocabulary and thus can be handled far more effectively by a computer than other kinds of texts.

There may be other areas where automatic translation will soon play a large role. “Machine translation can be used in areas of scientific publishing, for example, where vocabularies are constrained,” says Pierre Delagrave, a vice president at Cossette Communications Marketing, Canada’s largest advertising firm.

And as people increasingly use the Net as a source for routine information, such as weather reports, airplane schedules and hotel listings, users will be indulgent when they find a site that’s in their own language, Delagrave believes.

“If . . . you’re looking for something about the Netherlands on the Net, and you find a site from there in your language, you’ll be happy with what you get,” Delagrave says. “There are situations where imperfect translation is acceptable.”

Just how quickly machine translation improves is likely to have enormous implications for the character of the Internet over the long run. Jean-Claude Guedon, a professor of comparative literature at the University of Montreal and author of a series of articles on the issue of language on the Internet, sees two very different possibilities.

In one scenario, English will be the dominant Internet language, period, and people will be forced to learn it if they want to be deeply involved in cyberspace--just as scientists or airline pilots must learn at least some English today.

The other possibility, says Guedon, is that an oligarchy of trade languages will emerge. This group of languages would include English, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic--languages whose speakers have demographic and economic strength.

But for such a system to appear, these languages have to create a web of translation systems among themselves. The only economically feasible way to do this on a large scale is with the help of machine translation, Guedon says.

He believes the French will have a tough time. And many Francophones think the French government should focus on changing its policies to encourage the use of the Internet rather then worrying about the proper translation for e-mail.

But, in any case, it seems sure that no matter what one’s native tongue, it will become a lot easier to fureteur in the future.