UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Monitoring language diversity Simon Ellis Head of Special Projects (WEI, EFA, MDGs, Adult Ed, S&T, CI)

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Scale l According to ALMANAC 2004, one billion people worldwide are online l 15 countries account for nearly 70% of this population l US has the largest share for any country- nearly 20%

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Whose language? l Audience – è local (who has access, and can use it?) è global (who in the world wants to know?) l Writers (people who create sites) l Speakers (of un-written languages) l Listeners (who wants to know what?) l Readers (easier to read than speak, people read more languages than they speak) l How to measure diversity in this interaction? l How to measure if this interaction is inclusive?

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Which language does/should a person use in Cyberspace? l Official languages (identified by law) l National languages (of a majority) l Local languages (of a minority) l Written/unwritten l What kind of diversity are we promoting and measuring?

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS System constraints 3 forms of bias l Pre-existing »exogenous; cultural norms l Technical »scripts »bandwidth l Emergent – arising from usage » language of audience Friedman and Nissenbaum (1998)

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS The Big 3 Some comments l USA; mature, number of sites stabilised? l EU; multilingual? Mature, but users still rising l SE Asia; hosts and users rising. Degree of diversity?

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Language diversity l What can the Internet do to encourage diversity? l What place for minority languages? l 87% of multilingual sites came from outside major English speaking countries (OCLC) l Russia most multilingual (42% - OCLC) l On-line linguistic services – translation, grammars etc..

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Language Diversity

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Mali

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Dimensions of measurement l Multilingualism l Language communities »Which languages are on-line? l Intangible heritage »Endangered/local languages that do not have written script »Endangered writing systems eg: Latin Bahasa script used in schools in place of Balinese (with extensive literature)

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Measurement Problems l Domain names not exclusive to countries l Measuring Content è Imperfect search engines è English words in non-English sites è Same word in different languages

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Measures What can be done across ALL countries? l Multilingual sites (true diversity?) l ICT literacy (in which language?) è UIS LAMP l Number of languages used in on-line discussion l English READERS with non-English mother tongue

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Potential actors l ICT partnership UNCTAD, ITU, UIS, OECD l Regional/national centres of expertise l Community groups

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS Capacity building for indicators l Need to identify resources l Work with regional/national agencies relevant to targeted language groups l Facilitation of exchanges (face to face, virtual) to encourage diversity