Internationalization: Awakening the Sleeping Giant

Such a good talk at the @Media Conference. Molly was very passionate about this subject and the aduience got some really useful advice about addressing the 'world' in the 'world wide web'.

There is also an educational issue - our are schools creating enough linguists who might combine their enthusiasm for web techniologies to create multicultural sites? Or are we presuming that the dominant language of the web is English forever?

Hi Chris, thanks for your kind words regarding my talk.

I unfortunately think that we have a presumption in the English speaking world that English dominates. As I mentioned in my talk, there are actual laws where I live prohibiting teachers to teach in Spanish or even bilingually. To think, the teaching of communication and language - a crime!

As with so many things, it's awareness that can help. It becomes so obvious that the Web is more useful, accessible and downright interesting when it is filled with the many cultures and languages expressed worldwide.

I hope to do many more presentations of this nature and encourage everyone to look around the site here. Richard and the i18n Working Group have put together some amazing resources here, some of the quiet best at the W3C. I'm hoping to not keep that so quiet in the future ;-)