As of September 30, 2005, the North Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium is no longer in operation.

Since the World Wide Web's inception in 1989, more information is available to more people today than at any other time in our history. Such an information-rich environment provides a wealth of opportunities for people around the world to communicate with one another, even if they don't speak the same language. Thanks to translation resources on the Web, people can access information in almost any language.

Where Do I Begin?

A good starting point for accessing information would be to become acquainted with the online language support sites that offer fonts, dictionaries, and translation services. One such site is http://www.word2word.com/dictionary.html. This site is a one-stop shop for the multilingual Web surfer.

Finding Language Fonts

In order for you to view some Web sites written in languages other than English, your computer must have fonts that support viewing the language on your Web browser (e.g., Netscape Communicator or Microsoft Explorer). If you try to view a page written in another language but find that you are unable to view the text, you will either need to download the font that allows your Web browser to display that specific language, or enable your browser to view this language with a font that it already has. To enable Netscape Communicator, go to "View" in the menu bar and choose the appropriate character set that matches the language you desire to see. If the page is still not showing the text, you will need to locate the font on the Web and download it to your computer.

If your computer doesn't support alternate language fonts, there are resources available for free online. One of the most extensive international font clearinghouses is the Summer Institute of Linguistics International Fonts in Cyberspace. This site has a font finder that catalogs 450 links for 95 different languages. Fonts that are cataloged in the finder are available as freeware, although some shareware fonts are available for a small fee and are clearly identified as such in the guide.

Online Dictionaries

If English is your second language or if you just want to practice your rusty Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Hebrew, Portuguese, or Dutch, try using Babylon, a program available as a free download (for a limited time) at http://www.babylon.com/. Babylon allows you to right-click on a word when viewing any Web page and see it translated into one of eight languages. Babylon works on- and offline, and thus supports the translation of e-mail, spread sheets, or word processing documents.

There are online dictionaries you can use to translate words and definitions to and from English. The following are links to some of the online dictionaries that are currently available:

• Internet Dictionary Project
• German
• French
• Italian
• Japanese
• Hungarian
• Hebrew
• Swahili
• Urdu

Online Translation

Free language programs allow people to communicate by translating one language into another. For example, a girl in Illinois can write an electronic letter in English and send it to her pen pal in Egypt. With a click of his mouse, the friend in Cairo can translate that letter into Egyptian.

A word of caution: The accuracy of translations obtained through machines should always be taken with more than a grain of salt. They should never be considered as 100 percent accurate interpretations. Consider the translations as helpful ways to obtain the gist of news or other information.

The following are three examples of free translation programs:

Free Translation (http://www.FreeTranslation.com/), a recently released free online translation service by Transparent Language, provides text and Web page translation from English to Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese as well as from Spanish, French, or German to English.

World Language Resources (http://www.worldlanguage.com/) offers free translations of text and/or Web pages to and from over 20 languages. After the translation appears, the user has the ability to see additional definitions for every word that was translated by scrolling over a symbol that appears after each word.

Alta Vista Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com) provides users with the ability to translate approximately six full paragraphs of text from a document, e-mail, or Web page. Babelfish offers translation to German, Spanish, Italian, French, or Portuguese from English. You can also translate from English to any one of these five languages.

You can use any one of these sites to locate a wealth of information in one language and then translate it into almost any other conceivable language.

Multilingual Search Engines

Some search engines can be used to surf the Web in other languages.

Alta Vista Digital (http://www.altavista.com) can search for Web sites in Czech, Chinese, Danish, German, English, Estonian, French, Spanish, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, and Finnish.

Euroseek (http://www.euroseek.net) is a Web site where you can conduct searches in over twenty-five languages.