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example list shown in Table 1. By performing direct one-to-one mapping between languages, we avoid all
problems regarding filters with different impact on different languages, as well as context dependencies and other
semantic problems.
4. User Value
Table 1: Mappings for English, Japanese and Trad. Chinese
Restricting communication in the way we have been doing might be considered practical from the service
providers point of view, but why should this rather Orwellian approach appeal to end-users, who are free to
choose systems with more expressional power? Apart from the language-independence which obviously benefits
the user, we see a number of other reasons.
--> Ease of use: Since much of the information to be input to the system is already present in menus, the user
does not need to type very much, worry about personal style or formulations, etc.
--> Less decision making: Since the structure is standardized, the user does not need to decide what information
needs to be input. He/she can also rely on passive knowledge when it comes to maker name, brand name,
etc.
--> Personal privacy: With the advent of more and more sophisticated query mechanisms on the Internet, many
users are concerned about how bits and pieces of information that they supply can be used to make
inferences about them. Our system can only provide standardized information and should be less of a threat
to personal privacy.
--> Harassment: Considering that it is relatively easy to forge e-mail addresses and IP numbers, a user could
easily be connected to a sexually explicit or otherwise harmful statement in a free-form text system, which
can lead to harassment or other inconvenience for the user. In a system with low expressional power, this is
less of an issue.
--> Matching service: Since the information input to our system is highly structured, it is very well suited for
computer analysis. For this reason we can provide services that free-form text systems can not provide, such
as parameterized matching of buy and sell ads with notification of the match to the advertisers.
5. System Implementation
The system is strongly typed for information about goods in pre-specified categories. It consists of a relational
DBMS, a WWW-server, as well as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) application together with a set of HTML
files for each language, building on a system described in [Bjorn and Hotaka 95]. The CGI processes language
mappings and other meta-data, handles conversion between HTML data sent by users and SQL used for database
queries, as well as builds dynamic HTML pages in reply to the users' actions [Bjorn 95].
--> Meta Data Structure: Language mappings are stored in a meta-database, so that the system can automatically