The language of the Web 223
languages’ which ‘will make all the data in the world look like one
huge database’.^59
A great deal has to be done before this day dawns. There needs to
be immense progress in Internet linguistics, especially in semantics
and pragmatics, and also in graphology and typography. There is
an enormous gap to be filled in comparative lexicography: most
of the English technical terms used on the Web have still not been
translated into other languages, and a great deal of varying usage
exists, with English loanwords and local variants uncertainly co-
existing.^60 On the positive side, there has been an enormous growth
of interest in translation issuesand procedures during the past
decade.Andlocalization(theadaptationofaproducttosuitatarget
languageandculture)isthebuzz-wordinmanycircles.Thereseems
little doubt that the character of the Web is going to be increasingly
multilingual, and that the issues discussed in the first half of this
chapter are going to require revision in the light of what has been
said in the second. But I have as yet found no comparative research
into the way different languages approach the same problems on
their respective Web sites. Nor is it clear what happens linguistically
when Internet technology is used in new areas of application, and
when new technological developments influence the language to
move in different directions. What is clear is that the linguistic
future of the Web, and of the Internet as a whole, is closely bound
upwiththeseapplicationsandfuturedevelopments.Theytherefore
provide the topic of the final chapter.
(^59) Berners-Lee (1999: 200–1).
(^60) See, for example, the Multilingual Glossary of Internet Terminology project at
http://www.netglos.com.