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Daniel PRADO
Executive Secretary, MAAYA Network;
Director, Terminology and Language Industries, Latin Union
(Paris, France)
Language in the Virtual World and in the Real World:
Parallels to Take into Account in Language Policy
The Case of Romance Languages
It is often said that using a language for professional, administrative, educational,
legal and other purposes helps it stay alive, because speakers who are forced to
switch language according to context tend gradually to use the language that allows
them the widest variety of expression. In our knowledge society, a language loses
value in the eyes of its speakers if they cannot find knowledge or access to the rest
of the world through it. As we said here, in Yakutsk, in 2008, with communication
playing a growing role in the balance of power between two competing languages,
in the information age this phenomenon favours the languages that are the best
equipped or the most “prestigious” to the detriment of the others.
We know that the day is not far off when all, or at least the great majority of
humanity will have access to cyberspace. In this context, if a language is absent
from cyberspace, its speakers might, eventually, turn to other languages.
There is a high risk of the disappearance of more than nine out of ten languages
which are not represented in cyberspace, because their speakers will have to use
other languages for information, education, making purchases, administrative
procedures, offering services, connecting to the rest of the world and so on.
Furthermore, of the minority of languages that do have access, that is, between
300 and 500 according to different estimates, very few are really well equipped
and have a relevant presence on the Internet.
Despite some clear progress in multilingualism in recent years, only a handful
of the world’s languages have a noteworthy presence on the Web. English is
still the language most in use on the Internet, but, as all serious studies show, 8
its relative presence is falling. Corbeil told us back in 2000 that “very soon
the presence of English should fall to about 40% when sites are created in
different countries as they connect to the network” 9 , although we do not have
scientific confirmation of this data.
8
The full study Langues et cultures sur la Toile is available online: .
9
Corbeil Jean-Claude, «I comme informatique, industries de la langue et Internet », in B. Cerquigliny, Tu
parles!Le français dans tous ses états, Paris, Flammarion, 2000, p. 129.
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