Michael Hunter
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
for Western New York Library Resources Council
Member Libraries’ Staff
Sponsored by the
Western New York Library Resources Council
For Today …
 Communicate in a foreign language on a
computer
 Locate gateways to Search Services in
Foreign Countries
 Search non-English services
 Locate, use and evaluate free translation
services
 Explore Spanish language search
services
Focus today is on PC
(Windows)
Information for Macintosh at
http://www.colby.edu/lrc/help/accen
ts.html
What are the languages of
the Web’s Content?
 OCLC’s Web Characterization Project:
Of all unique websites in October, 2001






73%
7%
5%
3%
3%
9%
English
German
Japanese
French
Spanish
Other
Who is on the Web?
From Global Reach Online Marketing
http://global-reach.biz/globstats/
(formerly glreach.com)
Communicating in a foreign
language on a computer
 Two-way process (similar to us):
 Understanding (Display)
 Speaking (Output)
Displaying Content
“Understanding the language”
 A computer must recognize non-English
characters in a variety of contexts
 Files, e-mails, web pages and more
 Involves operating system, applications
and browser settings
Output (from You!)
“Speaking the language”
 Creating files, e-mails, web pages and
more
 Involves operating system, applications,
browsers AND keyboard layout settings
Displaying
Content
“Understanding the
Language”
Display
 Applications (Word, etc.)
 Check the help files
 Multilanguage use of Browsers
 Need to select language (font)
 Need to specify appropriate encoding option
for the languages you will be using
Setting the Language
(font)
 Netscape
Edit | Preferences | Appearance | Fonts (set
both variable and fixed)
NOTE: Netscape may automatically link a font
with the encoding you select)
 IE
Tools | Internet Options | Languages
 NOTE: To activate settings, close the
browser and open it again
Encoding
 The method by which a document has been
converted to computerized data (aka
character set)
 Not necessarily equivalent to a language.
 Most Western languages use one (ISO 8859-1),
but some languages (Russian, Chinese,
Japanese) have several encoding schemes
How do I know which one is
the current setting and/or
change it?
 Netscape
View | Character Set
 IE
View | Encoding
NOTE: IE has an Auto-select feature which
works with most commonly used languages
How do I know which to
use?
 For Western European use
Western ISO 8859-1
 For Central European, Baltic, Cyrillic, Greek,
Turkish-based and Asian languages try a
Windows or ISO encoding scheme when
available.
 Some schemes are platform-specific; check with
your system administrator
 If a document won’t display, try to e-mail a
contact person to determine the encoding
scheme you need. ( You may need to be
creative to do this!)
What is Unicode?
 Encoding scheme that provides a unique number
for every character
 No matter what the language
 No matter what the platform
 No matter what the program
 Required standard in XML, Java, and WML
 Enables data to be transported across multiple
platforms, languages and countries without
corruption.
 AKA USO 10646 AKA UTF-8
What are Dynamic Fonts?
 Fonts provided with the document
 Usually in a .pfr file that accompanies the
document
 Allows the user to view the document
without loading the font, or re-setting the
browser or application
 Increasingly used in documents in FarEastern languages
Output (from You!)
“Speaking the language”
Keyboards
 The “usual” one is US 101–
 a qwerty standard
 The US-International is a qwerty
keyboard with a few added features (I
recommend it for all Western European
languages)
 Other non-qwerty keyboard layouts exist
specifically for individual languages
Output (from You)
“Speaking the language”
 Set language (fonts) and encoding
appropriate to the language you will be
using
 Select a keyboard layout
 FOR WINDOWS:
Control Panel | Keyboard | Language (or Input
locales)
US-International recommended
 RESTART after changing a keyboard
layout to activate the change
Output (from You)
“Speaking the language”
 Some applications have specific
keyboard schemes for non-English
characters
 Creating Web pages:
 See Hunter’s Toolkit for html code for
characters in Western European languages
 Check help files in Composer, Front Page or
other editor you may be using
Search Services in
Foreign Languages
Why use Search Services based
in another country and/or
language?
 To find personal or business contact
information
 Addresses
 Phone numbers
 E-mail addresses
Sources for this information are often more
complete from these services
 For more detailed information about a
business or organization
Why use Search Services based
in another country and/or
language?
 For more comprehensive coverage of
news and economic, political and cultural
information about a country
 For alternate viewpoints about national
and international events and issues
How do I know if a service is an
engine or a directory (or both)?
 Some gateway sites may use the word Index to
denote a directory or other indication.
 Some gateways may specify this such as
www.nationsonline.com
 If the service is a portal, check results found using the
search box against results found in its subject
directory. If they are the same, it is a directory. If
different, it may be crawler-based (engine) or a blend
of engine and directory.
 Test for freshness (engines are usually fresher than
directories)
 Try e-mailing the main contact (Good Luck !!!!)
A few tips for exploring the
‘Net ourside our borders…
 Begin with subject directories (if available)
when you are unfamiliar with the country
or topic
 Seek out experts in an area or field;
identify websites that are run by them and
e-mail them for further leads
 Make use of support staff at US or foreign
embassies. They often know the best
Internet source for different types of
information
A few tips …
 Watch for hidden assumptions and be
culturally sensitive. Just because it
LOOKS like any other search engine or
directory doesn’t mean that the people and
information behind it have the same
cultural conditions and background as US
users.
Evaluating Sites in Foreign
Languages
 Be especially cautious about reliability; check
for author’s credentials, quality of links to and
from the site and date. Contact the author(s)
via e-mail if you feel the need. Most are happy
to hear that their site is visited and might be
helpful in your search.
 Many foreign-language sites lack top-level
domains (edu, com, gov and others). In these
cases, link relationships and credentials are
especially important.
NOTE: In the UK TLD’s are
co = com ac = edu
Evaluating Search Services
in Foreign Languages
 Check for freshness by searching for a recent
event
 Check for comprehensiveness by comparing
findings for a topic with the same search on
Google or FAST
 If you want to see which services are the most
popular in European countries, consult Jupiter
Media Metrix data at
http://www.jupitermmxi.com/europelanding.html
Free Translation Services
Globalization and the
Internet
 The ‘Net (and the World) is increasingly
global in content
 Non-English content is growing at a
faster rate than English content
 For the first time, in 2001 less than half
of all people online were from North
America
 If present growth trends continue by 2004
70% of all Internet users will be outside
North America
Babelfish
http://babelfish.altavista.com
 The first publicly-available service
 Spanish, French, German, Italian,
Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Chinese,
Japanese to English and vice-versa
 French to German, German to French
 Translates
 Any Altavista search result
 Any URL in the supported languages
 Supplied Text up to 150 words
 Auto-translates linked pages (new feature)
Freetranslation
http://www.freetranslation.com
 Offers Spanish, French, German,
Portuguese, Italian to English and viceversa
 English to Norwegian
 Offers drop-down menus for vowels with
diacritics
 Text and URL both accepted
 Good “Help” file
Translate.ru – Russia-based
http://www.translate.ru
 Offers Russian, French, German and
Spanish to English and vice-versa
 German to French and vice-versa
 Russian to French and vice-versa
 Russian to German and vice-versa
 Accepts Text, URL’s in supported
languages and e-mails
 Auto-translates linked pages (????)
Google
Google.com
 Offers German, Spanish, French, Italian,
Portuguese to English and vice-versa
 German to French and vice-versa
 French to Spanish and vice-versa
 Google search results auto-translated
into English
 Also accepts text and URL’s in supported
languages
Online Translation
Dictionaries
 Martindale’s Collection (highly recommended)
 http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/Language.html
 Lexicool
 http://www.lexicool.com/
When terms aren’t
translated …
 “Gisting” translation process
 Automatically translates terms that can be
translated with a low degree of ambiguity
 Idioms and other terms that cannot be
unambiguously translated appear in the
original language
Gisting
 Why might you need this?
 As a filter to determine if a document is
worth a finer, more costly translation
 Useful in dealing with documents in
multiple languages (eg. an e-mail message
with several comments from people using
different languages)
Evaluating Translation
Services
 Choose a site that has a bi-lingual version
 Eg. The Louvre has French, English, Spanish
and Japanese versions http://www.louvre.fr
 Enter the URL of a page from the foreign
language version and compare the
translation to the site’s own English
version
OR, simply compare the translations of any
URL or text among various services
Compare these:
French:
www.mbam.qc.ca/orangerie/index.html
German:
www.transgen.de
Italian:
www.roma-intercultura.it
Spanish-language
Search Services
Google Spanish Search Tip
 In Google Advanced Search, search for
significant words or phrases in the TITLE
(eg. museos, cultura, negocios, noticias)
 Limit the search by DOMAIN
 Country code (es, mx, co -- Spain, Mexico,
Columbia)
 Top level (gov OR gob – government or
gobierno)
Internet Censorship in China
Human Rights Watch Report
 China’s government has over 60 sets of
regulations governing Internet content
 Individuals have been put on trial and
sentenced to prison for downloading or
posting politically sensitive material on
the web
 Government censors monitor Internet
cafés
 Politically sensitive topics are prohibited
in chatrooms
Internet Censorship in China
2002
 August – Chinese Government requests Google,
Altavista, Yahoo and other services to remove Falun
Gong sites from their database.
 Yahoo does so, aas it operates an office in China
and as policy obeys laws of country of operation.
(Google and AV have no Chinese offices)
 Sept 2 - Access to Google and Altavista blocked in
China by Chinese Government
 Sept 11 - Chinese government restores access, but
continues to monitor Google
Foreign Search Services:
A few added values …
 Personal or business contacts in that
country
 Primary source material about a foreign
country or topic
 More detailed coverage of political,
economic and cultural issues in that
country
 Alternate viewpoints about national and
international events and issues
Thank you and
Best of Luck in your
“travels”
Michael Hunter
Warren Hunting Smith Library
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Geneva, NY 14507
(315) 781-3552
hunter@hws.edu