ussion
conducted in 'Kreyol'. In addition, one will find documents
related to Haiti in French, in the old colonial Creole, and I
am open to publishing others in Spanish and other languages. I
do not offer any sort of translation, but multilingualism is
alive and well at the site, and I predict that this will
increasingly become the norm throughout the web."

Guy added in June 2001: "Kreyol is the only national language
of Haiti, and one of its two official languages, the other
being French. It is hardly a minority language in the Caribbean
context, since it is spoken by eight to ten million people.
(...) I have taken the promotion of Kreyol as a personal cause,
since that language is the strongest of bonds uniting all
Haitians, in spite of a small but disproportionately
influential Haitian elite's disdainful attitude to adopting
standards for the writing of Kreyol and supporting the
publication of books and official communications in that
language. For instance, there was recently a two-week book
event in Haiti's Capital and it was promoted as 'Livres en
folie' ('A mad feast for books'). Some 500 books from Haitian
authors were on display, among which one could find perhaps 20
written in Kreyol. This is within the context of France's major
push to celebrate Francophony among its former colonies. This
plays rather well in Haiti, but directly at the expense of
Creolophony. What I have created in response to those attitudes
are two discussion forums on my website, Windows on Haiti, held
exclusively in Kreyol. One is for general discussions on just
about everything but obviously more focused on Haiti's current
socio-political problems. The other is reserved only to debates
of writing standards for Kreyol. Those debates have been quite
spirited and have met with the participation of a number of
linguistic experts. The uniqueness of these forums is their
non-academic nature."

= Translations

Henk Slettenhaar is a professor in communication technologies
at Webster University, Geneva, Switzerland. He has regularly
insisted on the need of bilingual websites, in the original
language and in English. He wrote in December 1998: "I see
multilingualism as a very important issue. Local communities
that are on the web should principally use the local language
for their information. If they want to present it to the world
community as well, it should be in English too. I see a real
need for bilingual websites. I am delighted