Language Borders Hinder the European Information Society

We cannot precisely know what the future information society will look like. When it comes to discussing a common European energy strategy or foreign policy, we might want to listen to European foreign minsters speak in their native language. We might want a platform where people, who speak many different languages and who have varying language proficiency, can discuss a particular subject while technology automatically gathers their opinions and generates brief summaries. We also might want to speak with a health insurance help desk that is located in a foreign country.

A global economy and information space confronts us with more languages, speakers and content.

It is clear that communication needs have a different quality as compared to a few years ago. In a global economy and information space, more languages, speakers and content confront us and require us to quickly interact with new types of media. The current popularity of social media (Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) is only the tip of the iceberg.

Today, we can transmit gigabytes of text around the world in a few seconds before we recognize that it is in a language we do not understand. According to a recent report requested by the European Commission, 57% of Internet users in Europe purchase goods and services in languages that are not their native language. (English is the most common foreign language followed by French, German and Spanish.) 55% of users read content in a foreign language while only 35% use another language to write e-mails or post comments on the web.¹ A few years ago, English might have been the lingua franca of the web—the vast majority of content on the web was in English—but the situation has now drastically changed. The amount of online content in other languages (particularly Asian and Arabic languages) has exploded.

Which European languages will thrive and persist in the networked information and knowledge society?

An ubiquitous digital divide that is caused by language borders has surprisingly not gained much attention in the public discourse; yet, it raises a very pressing question, “Which European languages will thrive and persist in the networked information and knowledge society?”

¹

European Commission Directorate-General Information Society and Media, User language preferences online, Flash Eurobarometer #313, 2011 (http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_313_en.pdf).