The Internet, Life and Language Translators
One of the most preferred media for communication within and outside the companies over the past decade has been the Internet (net) or the Web, which has been a crucial factor in intercultural communication and exchange of information. When it comes to business communication, it integrates types of communication means that partly replace old media and give new dimensions to intercultural business communication. The questions that language policies applied by companies to intercultural communication on the web can pose are: which languages are used in the communication with domestic and international customers? In what ways are they treated? How does English co-exist with other languages? How do websites realize multilingualism? Some of the international railway companies that had been in the business long before the WWW was established will be discussed so that these questions receive their answer. For instance a German Translation once noticed that one railway company offered information on their services to their domestic customers only in German but at the same time, this company offered the same customers information in English on its website.
In the mid 1990s the Internet and the World Wide Web became more commercial and even though today every company’s business is unthinkable without a website, in the first years most businesses hesitated to invest in them. Furthermore, the principle of electronic commerce comprises all sorts of business transactions and communication including customer service functions, sales, marketing, PR, advertising. Websites are combinations of several business text genres such as brochures, advertisements, catalogues, manuals, reports, etc. Videos, slide shows, audio presentations and animation are among the other types. Therefore, we cannot but mention that today information and communication own their smooth functioning to language in the first place. So, one of the main contributions of the Web has been to pull down all the barriers to trade and communication, but when language remains an obstacle a website will not be understandable to all of its audiences though it is accessible all over the world. Defining the target audience is the first step towards selecting the language of a website. For example, only Portuguese speakers will be able to understand the language of a website designed in Portuguese. The audience of this website may be much wider if a Portuguese Translation renders it into English.
Even though there are few technical problems to producing websites in languages other than English due to the changing of the situations, at first there were problems for languages other than English when going online. In 1994 a consortium was established in order to make the WWW technically able to meet the demands of modern business, research and interpersonal communication in all writing systems and languages, which should be serving the whole global community. In order to ensure languages that used character coding different from English, new types of coded characters were created and developed. The new solutions that the WWW has brought to intercultural business communication are connected with the further dimensions given by the possibility to add video and sound. Setting their own parameters was the novelty different cultures could experience, and this was made possible by dropping out the cultural characteristics accompanying the development of software. Consequently, English would not be the only language that could be selected in the process of targeting international audiences, so, for instance, a French Translator could translate software parameters that could run for France with the French conventions.