中文将成为未来网上的主要语言

               原文作者： Kieren McCarthy  发于：07/12/2001 at 11:50 GMT

   随着越来越多的人上网，2007年前，中文中将超过英语，成为网上使用最广的语言。
      至少，昨天在日内瓦，世界知识产权组织（WIPO）是这样报道的。今天，说英语的国际互联网络用户只占微弱的多数（4亿6万万以英语为母语）。而明年（2002），大多数网络用户将不以英语为第一语言。到2003，1/3的网络用户将使用一种不同的语言。
      根据世界知识产权组织的报告，随着成千上万的不同语言域名上网，在不久的将来，美国以发明国际互联网络以及其早期抢先占领国际互联网络所带来的优势将不复存在。若干大公司正在从事将非拉丁字母文字嵌入国际互联网络基础结构中的开发工作，它们向中文、日文、阿拉伯文的等文字开放脚本，并且考虑引入加重符号。
      世界知识产权组织认为，人们一旦可以使用第一语言进行有效的网上交流，浏览英语网页的数量将会减少。
      当然，应该注意的是该预测是由世界知识产权组织和国际电信联盟，在日内瓦主办的为期两天的讨论会作出的。而此次会议的目的几乎完全是致力于多种语言的域名开发。国际电信联盟（ITU）关心的是实用的技术问题，世界知识产权组织关心的仅仅在于在知识产权保护以及其纠纷的解决，而目前世界知识产权组织从这一行当中获利并不大。□ 贺文照译

 Chinese is the future of the Net
              By Kieren McCarthy
              Posted: 07/12/2001 at 11:50 GMT

           
      Chinese will become the Web's most used language by 2007, outranking English, as more and more people get online. 
     That, at least, is what WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) said yesterday in Geneva, reported by the FT. At the moment, there is a slight majority of English-speaking worldwide Internet users (460 million of us). But by next year, most will not have English as a first language and by 2003, a third will use a different language on the Web. 
     According to WIPO, the bias stemming from the Internet's invention and early take-up in the US is soon to pass as millions more multilingual domain names come online. Several big companies are working at including non-Latin characters into the Internet infrastructure, opening up script-languages like Chinese, Japanese, Arabic etc and allowing for accents to be introduced. 
     WIPO believes that once it is possible to communicate effectively in your first language, people will do just that - to the detriment of the number of English Web pages. 
      Of course, you should bear in mind that this prediction was made at the start of a two-day conference in Geneva hosted by WIPO and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), dedicated almost entirely to the issue of multilingual domain names. The ITU is concerned about the practical and technical problems, WIPO is interested only in intellectual property and dispute resolution - the business from which it is now making a small fortune.