The Net, Life and Portuguese Translators
WWW or the World Wide Web is the medium of intercultural communication and exchange of information that has radically changed the way companies do business around the world over the last decade. Speaking about intercultural business communication, the WWW integrates those types of means of communication that partly or fully replace old media and shape up the outlook of business communication. What are the main languages used in the communication between foreign and domestic customers? How do they perceive those languages? What is the role of English in reference to the other languages? How do websites realize plurilingualism? These are only some of the questions that arise when we talk about the language policies applied by companies to intercultural communication. Long before the advent of the WWW, international railway companies had been doing business, so they will serve a good example in attempting to answer these questions. It is curious to note that one German railway company used to offer information only in English on its website, but otherwise its customers were used to receiving information in German only, a German Translation once noticed this and got suspicious about this matter.
In the mid 1990s the Internet and the World Wide Web became more commercial and even though today every company’s business is unthinkable without a website, in the first years most businesses hesitated to invest in them. Furthermore, the principle of electronic commerce comprises all sorts of business transactions and communication including customer service functions, sales, marketing, PR, advertising. Websites are combinations of several business text genres such as brochures, advertisements, catalogues, manuals, reports, etc. Others would include slide shows, video, animation, audio presentations, etc. Arguably the greatest barrier that stands on the way of information and communication today is language and nothing else. Thus if we are able to access a website no matter where we are in the whole world, it may not be comprehensible to us and it is language that remains the last obstacle to it even though the main contribution of the Web to communication and trade has been to remove all existing barriers. Selecting the language of a website is related to defining the target audience. For instance, using only Portuguese on the website makes it available only to Portuguese speakers. Translating the website into English by a Portuguese Translation can gain it much wider audience.
Even though there are few technical problems to producing websites in languages other than English due to the changing of the situations, at first there were problems for languages other than English when going online. As the WWW had to have the capacity to serve the whole global community by meeting the demands and expectations of contemporary research, interpersonal communication and business, an organization was founded in 1994, which should provide the necessary technical equipment in order to make this possible. Those languages that used writing systems different from English were provided with new and different kinds of coded characters. Adding sound and video was another possibility that has given further dimensions, and for intercultural business communication, the WWW has brought new solutions. The cultural characteristics that used to accompany the development of software dropped out, so different cultures could set their own parameters. Thus, software parameters that could be valid to France could be translated by a French Translator using the French conventions, so selecting English as the only language of the Web site was not the only means of targeting international audience.
