The most recent development is Unicode. Although still evolving and only justbeing incorporated into the latest software, this new coding system translateseach character into 16 bytes. Whereas 8 byte Extended ASCII could only handle amaximum of 256 characters, Unicode can handle over 65,000 unique characters andtherefore potentially accommodate all of the world's writing systems on thecomputer.
So now the tools are more or less in place. They are still not perfect, but atlast we can at least surf the Web in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and numerousother languages that don't use the Western alphabet. As the Internet spreads toparts of the world where English is rarely used — such as China, for example,it is natural that Chinese, and not English, will be the preferred choice forinteracting with it. For the majority of the users in China, their mother tonguewill be the only choice.
There is a change-over period, of course. Much of the technical terminology onthe Web is still not translated into other languages. And as we found with ourMultilingual Glossary of Internet Terminology —
known as NetGlos — thetranslation of these terms is not always a simple process. Before a new termbecomes accepted as the "correct" one, there is a period of instability where anumber of competing candidates are used. Often an English loanword becomes thestarting point — and in many cases the endpoint. But eventually a winneremerges that becomes codified into published technical dictionaries as well asthe everyday interactions of the nontechnical user. The latest version ofNetGlos is the Russian one and it should be available in a couple of weeks or so(end of September 1998). It will no doubt be an excellent example of theongoing, dynamic process of "russification" of Web terminology.