More than half of the content on the internet is in English. Some online platforms like Facebook and Google Translate have increased their offers in other languages, and are now available in more than 100 languages. But internationalised domain names, or domains containing characters from a non-Latin alphabet or an accent mark, still make up only 3% of the world’s total domains.
Research shows that that affects the amount of online content in different languages: Internationalised domain names in, for example, Cyrillic, could encourage more Bulgarian speakers to access the internet in their native language. EURACTIV explored the struggle to increase multilingualism online as part of this event report.
This report is being featured around the debate Language access to the internet that took place on 10 January in the European Parliament.
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Reding: ‘Endangered languages could be saved by the internet’
Internet platforms have helped the internet to become more multilingual, and especially less widely spoken languages like Luxembourgish, Viviane Reding told EURACTIV.com in an interview.
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EU urged to help expand internet domain names in different languages
Researchers and officials working on internet governance have urged EU institutions to help expand the use of internationalised domain names, which contain letters from alphabets including Cyrillic or Greek, or accented letters like in the word “café”.
