a
language other than English, we translate into English and publish only
the English version. This is because the number of pages we can print
is constrained, governed by our customer-base (advertisers and
subscribers). But for our web edition we also give the original
version."

Founder of Euro-Marketing Associates and its virtual branch Global
Reach, Bill Dunlap was championing the assets of e-commerce in Europe
among his fellow compatriots in the U.S. Bill wrote in December 1998:
"There are so few people in the U.S. interested in communicating in
many languages -- most Americans are still under the delusion that the
rest of the world speaks English. However, here in Europe (I'm writing
from France), the countries are small enough so that an international
perspective has been necessary for centuries."

As the internet quickly spread worldwide, more and more people in the
U.S. realized that, although English may stay the main international
language for exchanges of all kinds, people did prefer to read
information in their own language. To reach as large an audience as
possible, companies and organizations needed to offer bilingual,
trilingual, even multilingual websites, while adapting their content to
a given audience. Thus the need of both localization and
internationalization, which became a major trend in the following
years, not only in the U.S. but in many countries, with companies
setting up bilingual websites, in their language and in English, to
reach a wider audience, and get more clients.

Brian King, director of the WorldWide Language Institute (WWLI),
explained in September 1998: "As well as the appropriate technology
being available so that the non-English speaker can go, there is the
impact of 'electronic commerce' as a major force that may make
multilingualism the most natural path for cyberspace. A pull from non-
English-speaking computer users and a push from technology companies
competing for global markets has made localization a fast growing area
in software and hardware development."

In 1998, the European Network in Language and Speech (ELSNET) was a
network of more than 100 European academic and industrial institutions.
ELSNET members intended to build multilingual speech and natural
language systems with coverage of both spoken and written language.
Steven Krauwer, coordinator of ELSNET, explained in September 1998: "As
a European citizen I think that multilingualism on the web is
absolu