IGF 2010
VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
17 SEPTEMBER 10
SESSION 27
0930
USE OF LATIN AND NATIVE AMERICAN
LANGUAGES ON THE INTERNET
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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> OLGA CAVALLI: Good morning, everyone. We are totally ready. Thank you for joining us. Before starting I would like to -- how many of us do speak Spanish? One, two, three. Okay. How many of you don't speak Spanish (chuckle)? Okay. We have four people who does -- who don't speak Spanish, and -- but this workshop was held last year in Sharm-el-Sheikh. We made it in Spanish because we were all Spanish speaking people and about the usage of the language. My proposal today is as we have a transcriber in English and the transcribers have been so kind to come here and ask me if it was okay that we can use either language.
I would propose, if you agree, that we use Spanish as the main language in the session, and if there are questions or other comments in English, I -- I am able to translate or you can check the transcribing in either English or you can hear English or Spanish. If you think this is -- this is a fair idea for those of you that don't speak Spanish, just say yes or you can disagree and -- we are so few that we can discuss it. We can do a little bit direct democracy here. Are we okay doing Spanish? My two fellow students there, will you be okay in hearing our language in your ears?
>> (inaudible)
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I know, I know it does, and I'm sorry I cannot speak your languages because it's -- that is my problem, because I cannot handle that. So thank you very much for being with us today. The idea -- I will switch to Spanish. (speaking in Spanish)
>> OLGA CAVALLI: One question to the transcriber, if you can hear me, if I speak in Spanish, are you able to -- are you able to transcribe it?
>> CAPTIONER: No, I'm not. I don't speak Spanish.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Okay. I got it. I'm sorry, I misunderstood your colleague. Okay. We'll go into Spanish anyway, okay? We make it in Spanish? No? Yes? No? Both? Yes or no. Yes? No? We do it in English? Are we okay doing it in English? That's fine.
>> (inaudible)
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Raul, as usual you are a great, good friend, and Raul Echeberria said if we want to speak in Spanish we can translate. There are several here and we speak both languages. So thanks to the transcriber for that and for letting me know. So I will switch to English again.
So I got involved in this issue because of a workshop that I was invited by ISOC in Hyderabad and I found it really very interesting understanding the barrier for the language of several people in the world. If we think the most language in intimate is English, and we realized the amount of people that do not speak English in the whole world, then we can find that languages and diversity is one of the big concerns if we really want an Internet for everyone. If we really want to include all the rest of the people that don't use Internet in the whole world.
Just one -- some figures that I would like to share with you about our beautiful language. If you look at the first page of Wikipedia, it's something that I'm always checking. If you look at the amount of published articles in English, it's about three million and a half amount of articles. If you look at the articles in German it's 1,200,000. In French, it's about 1 million. Italian, 700,000. And Spanish is around 600,000. So that's a big difference.
I've been working with my students in the university trying to -- all the works that we do, we don't do them anymore in paper. We try to publish them in Wikipedia, so we generate more content which has academic level with relevant information in Spanish. We have been doing that for a while, and if we have time I can show to you some of the works that they have been uploading, which have information in Spanish about Argentina and about technology, which is what I teach.
So I would kindly introduce you to our friends, our panelists that are here with us today. Some of them couldn't make it but have sent some information that we will show you. We have today Raul Echeberria, who is the director of LACNIC, the regional RAR for Latin America. Nacho Amadoz, he's from -- I can't recall your position, but when you talk you let us know, which is a very interesting project about the usage of Catalan, which is a Latin language in the Internet. We have Alberto Perez, from cc -- from Spain, .es, and we don't have Jorge Martinez but we have Ana Olmos Sanz, Jorge had to leave and the -- IGF from Spain but Ana works with Jorge and she will make his presentation.
And we're missing Pedro that was -- Pedro is from Google. He was supposed to come and he couldn't make it. We had a presenter from Brazil that she couldn't come to the IGF because she had some problems in her family. Also we have apologies from Microsoft. They have done very interesting things about the use of Native American languages in the Internet, but they have sent us a video to share with you, and we have apologies from UNESCO from Guenther Cyranek, who is our friend from Latin America. He had another meeting to attend in Latin America so he couldn't fly to Vilnius.
Before we start we also want to share with you something that we started to investigate, which is the usage or the purpose of why Internet could help some Native American languages, and let me share with you some information that I have been researching in relation with a study made by UNESCO: Every 15 days one language is extinguished in the world. In relation with Latin America, it's a beautiful language in my mother tongue, but there are many other languages which I don't know because my family came from Europe, so I would say that my family language is Italian because my grandparents were from Italy, but there are many families that live in the region from before.
So we have, for example, Paraguay. Paraguay is a totally bilingual country. They speak Guarani and Spanish, both. And their constitution changed in 1992. They have declared Guarani an official language. Most of the people speak Guarani. In Bolivia there are around 32 different Indian languages that are being in the process of recognition by the government. In -- sorry. In Guatemala there are around 23 languages spoken by different Mayas families that are still living. The problem is most of these languages are spoken only by older people, younger people not usually get to know these languages and they will be gone when these people will die.
And in Venezuela there are also 34 languages, different languages spoken by the Native American people. In this sense, in Argentina we have several and we have also the Porteno, which is a language that we speak in Buenos Aires, which is a mixture in between Italian and Spanish, which I like very much, and which I speak, although I am from the interior of Argentina, and so I speak the way that people from the west speak.
So I will turn the floor to one of our speakers, would Raul be the first one? Do you want to go first? Okay.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: I think it would be interesting to have some kind of dialogue, not formal speeches.
>> JORGE VEGA IRACELAY: We are not so many.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Yeah, I think that the --
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Sorry, we're competing with the Germans. They're talking with the Parliament -- (laughter).
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Okay. I think that's the -- Spanish is a very important language. It's almost very similar -- the number of Spanish speakers is -- as a native language is almost similar to the English speakers as native languages. After the Chinese Mandarin and third language is more spoken -- it's the most language spoken in the world as the native language and the second one is -- it's the second language. The difference is that Chinese Mandarin is spoken in less countries and Spanish is the -- is spoken in all Latin America. There are more than 80 million people that speak Spanish in the United States, obviously Spain, some parts of -- very few parts of Africa, but it is very spread in Europe and also in Brazil all the --
>> OLGA CAVALLI: May I comment something? It's -- yes, let me say something. It's very interesting what you mention about the United States. The United States will be, I think next year, the biggest Spanish-speaking country in the world.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Yeah. And -- a few years ago the teaching of Spanish is in the elementary school in Brazil also. So it means that the number of Spanish speakers is growing very much.
But it is not reflected in the -- the presence of the language on the Internet. The interesting thing is that in the way that Internet is becoming more and more massive a platform, and so the presence on the Internet is becoming much more important, and the language that is present on the Internet are facing the risk to disappear, and this is very unfortunate, but somebody said yesterday in the governance for the (off microphone) that there are only 350 languages present on the Internet, why there are more than 12,000 languages spoken in the world. This is -- so that the -- I think that's many people should realise the importance of the presence of a language on the Internet. When I say many people, I'm referring mainly to the public sector. That is the people that develop public policy for promoting the use of the language.
So we can not change in the short-term, we cannot change the fact that English is the most international language, and so it is also the most -- the most -- the most common language on the Internet, and we will not change that, so I think that the challenge for increasing the presence of the usage of Spanish on the Internet is -- is really to become multi-lingual, not only the communication with the people. I think that there are many developments that are being done by big companies in the sense, but the Internet the capacity of the translation (off microphone) to permit people from different language to communicate with each other speaking their own languages.
With the increase of the -- of the importance of the social networks on the Internet, this is becoming more important because most of the traffic now on the Internet is traffic peer to peer and communication between people. So I think that -- I don't know how we could motivate the companies in order to work in this -- in the sense we have to make attractive this business for the companies in some way, but it is real important. I think that the -- the importance of governments is really needed.
I think that languages have a value but not only cultural value; languages have economic value. So I think that's -- people should realise that more, that they're losing a language -- or reducing the importance of a language, what is happening with Spanish on the Internet, has a very high economic impact. So it has been measured. In fact, I saw three or four years ago some studies, economic studies done in universities in Spain about this topic, and I think that this assumption that we explore in order to show the main stakeholders, private sector in this case, the people that could face (off microphone) business doing development, but also the public sector that makes policies, in order to convince them this assumption that there's work to do.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you. I would like to make, really, a -- I would like to commend LACNIC for having the Web page in three languages, in Spanish, Portuguese and in English, which for the region is important, we don't only speak English. A big region in the country speaks Portuguese is very much related to Spanish but it's a different language.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: This is what I try to refer. I think there are two ways of promoting Spanish on the Internet. One is promoting Spanish -- working and promoting the presence of the beneficiary. But the other way is not strictly related with a given language, it's just to make -- to make a more multi-lingual -- multi-lingual Internet. If we have a more multi-lingual Internet, then the same importance that the languages have in the real world as will be seen on the Internet. If people can't speak Spanish on the Internet and can't be understood by other -- and can be understood by other people, they will do, and if people can publish contents in Spanish they will do, because it is much easier for them, for Spanish speakers to do that, in a way.
In LACNIC we're facing that difficulty. It's not easy. We don't try to be an organisation that speak -- that is able to speak other languages. We are trying to be a multi-lingual organisation. That is different. We don't want to be an organisation that speaks Spanish but also is able to speak other languages, and the communication between people is not easy. The policy process -- having it in three languages are very challenge, so I think that's -- we are exploring other technologies, other -- other tools that we can use in order to permit people to write in their own language and participate in discussions in their own language, but it's not easy. It's really a challenge.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Raul. I would like also to mention, I forgot Jimenez Segura sent his apologies. He had an event in Spain and couldn't make it to Vilnius. He was the one that told me that the United States will be the biggest Spanish-speaking country in 2012, so I thought it was remarkable information to have in mind about Spanish. Thank you so much, Raul, and I commend LACNIC for having all the events with translation into Spanish, English and Portuguese, which is a major investment, and it lowers the barriers in between languages for participants. Nacho, would you go now?
>> NACHO AMADOZ: It's going to be hard to fight with the Germans.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Oh, I know.
>> NACHO AMADOZ: So what do I begin with? I don't know, frankly. I don't know, because being the IGF for this exchange of ideas is a great format but it's so free that it's hard to pick one.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I would like to -- for those who don't know, you I would like to stress the value of your project, the .cat project, that it's related with GTLE, it's a GTLE, right?
>> NACHO AMADOZ: Yes.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: It's a (off microphone) .cat, but at the same time, and I think that's the beauty of your project, it's linked with the content in the language we present, which is Catalan, and I would like you to tell us about that.
>> NACHO AMADOZ: You've mentioned two points crucial in this debate not only in our experience but also in others, and that is content, and the other one is what are we? Are we kind of an experiment, an difference other than a ccTLD or a gTLD? I'll come back to that later but I'd like to give a brief overview of what we do. We are .cat, the first and only cultural linguistic domain and we surf the Catalan -- and it's a language spoken in Spain. From our experience, that we can take some lessons for the future of other communities that want to have a domain name on the Internet, and that want to have their content and their presence on-line.
As I said, there are many topics that you have covered, and not only here but all around the IGF, but here you have touched upon two very important things. First one is content. The main thing is content. Important is not the domain name but the content. Having content -- using that content, making an extensive use of that content in a certain language is what matters, not having symbolic presence of that language on the Internet or having a tack, a brand just to represent community that that's not used and produce content.
The other topic was are we a gTLD? Yes, but we are a weird gTLD, because we are not generic in the sense of a dot-com, of another commercial top-level domain. We are a sponsored generic top-level domain bound by our contract and our agreement with ICANN, but we also have strong ties to the community of ccTLDs, because we cover the needs of a community that is very present in a certain area, not only in that area, but mainly in a certain area.
Our relationships with ICANN and for example the centre community, the other ccTLDs and the gTLDs are very good and I think that we fulfill that role of, say, kind of a bridge, a bridge between the top-level domains, a bridge between the end users and the Internet and a bridge among the facilitators of the content and the people that are going to use that content. That is quite a bargain, because sometimes you don't know where -- you're just a TLD, you're just the provider -- of the tag, the people to use that tag to go ahead with their content. But sometimes the end users just have you in mind as their bridge to the Internet, and I think that is also a good idea and a good example for all the communities to use.
Maybe we are not providing the next billion users to the Internet, but we surely are providing to the existing users more interaction with the Internet and more involvement with the Internet. I think that's very important for all communities that have languages that are alive but that they don't see reflected that importance and that life on the Internet, because maybe they are not known globally, but maybe through a tag that helps them be recognized comes an extra provision of that content from whoever, multinationals, firms, administrations, whoever, but mainly to their own community.
There are two senses, two directions here. The first one is showing that there is a strong community that's supported and that can push that (off microphone) main name, which was our case, and that shows the rest of the people, also the community, that will -- see that identity reflected on the entity. So a tag, we are only a tag but a tag is important.
And then comes in another direction the importance to the community to see that what they do in their own language can be done, that's it, nothing more than that but nothing less that can be done. Sometimes it's very easy. The other day we were in a panel with a guy from Facebook who has come here, and they have Facebook in tons of languages, because they see that they need Facebook to be in the language of the end user to be successful. They need Facebook to be in the language because otherwise these end users are going to go to another social network. I mean, I think that's very intelligent from their part, just realizing that you have to treat the end user in the language, in as many languages as possible, but if you don't have that people's language, probably they are not going to feel as comfortable in that social network.
Probably a lot of them can use another language, maybe three languages, so they can just pick it in English or whatever, but probably they are going to use their own language version when available. Same happens with Microsoft or with Google and with all these guys that have shown that they understand how the market and languages work together.
Sometimes it does not happen like that. That is why a tag to reflect that identity might be important, and that is one of the topics.
Another one is the thing with how languages are going to be present on the Internet. The Internet is not going to be the magic tool that revives languages. I think that it's going to be the tool that helps those languages remain alive, but it's not going to happen just by magic. You need a real community using that language that turns to the Internet, uses that content, modifies that content and interacts with other communities to keep that language alive.
Just by being on the Internet it's not going to remain alive. Just by putting public money on it it's not going to be alive. Sometimes it might be needed, the trigger, the action and to help people to get motivations to put their content on-line, but it needs to be a language that is used by those people. Otherwise, it makes no sense. It will just be a delay on the death of that language.
So the question of how do we deal with these languages, I think that is a matter of public policy debate, but the Internet is a crucial one here.
And I think that's all. I think I've covered most of the things I wanted to say.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Nacho, would you be so -- I know very well your project and I think it's a great project for your community, and would you explain to the rest of us, how do you link the content in Catalan with the fact that someone has a .cat domain name?
>> NACHO AMADOZ: Sure. The main name -- in getting to the main name and getting to the ICANN to show the need for that name was that it was going to be used by the Catalan speaking community. So there was a requirement in the registration of the domain name to use at least some degree of content in Catalan in that domain name. You can use every language. You can have the folk language, Spanish, English, or Mandarin Chinese, but at least some of the content has to be in Catalan, in order to foster people getting to .cat, and regardless if Catalan is their mother tongue, just get into it, use it for a little while. For example, in multinational sector there are some companies that have a micro-Web Site. I say micro, compared to their official ones, with their software libraries in Catalan, or with the directories there.
So the thing is to give wide coverage of usages. You have the people that is going to use it as a default, because it's what they feel like. You have the administrations, which are using it by default. You have (off microphone) that want to block in Spanish and Catalan, and sometimes they use .cat, and you have people from abroad that may want to get into the Catalan speaking market step by step. So the requirement is to use content because content is what matters.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Do you know if there is a similar project to -- like yours, I mean, in other community? Have you heard about that? Because I don't know, maybe you can share that information with us.
>> NACHO AMADOZ: Yeah, there are several projects that -- well, when the window opens it's going to be tons of projects, but the people we know are working with projects that follow closely our model. They are not for profit, not partisan organisations that want to engage as many people from their societies as possible to go ahead to get to the main name. You have the Welsh, you have the Aleutians, you have Brittons, in Europe we have three along with Scottish and Basque, and we have others along with the formal working (off microphone). Okay. We have assembled a little informal group in which we share these experiences and try to put in common good practices, but I really encourage people that feel the need to get engaged in such a -- to go ahead, to go ahead, hopefully, and briefly we will have the final guidelines to appear for the main line.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you. Just hearing your speech is -- I think it's an interesting combination in between technology, community involvement and relevant content. It seems that if the three go together, but for the first -- the driver should be the community involvement and the community convincement that they want to prefer the country, because it's not only the language that we talk, it's our own culture. Language means a lot of things, not only what we talk and what we write. So it seems that when they combine together, then technology is not on -- it's not a magic solution, but it helps. It's a platform that may help these beautiful community projects to be successful and to be good.
>> NACHO AMADOZ: I agree with you. When I said that it's not the magic solution, I didn't want to say that it's not important. It is crucial, because it helps combine the cultures. It helps to mix contents with different languages from different people, and it helps to make just a richer society. But on the other hand, you just cannot expect it to keep artificially alive some things that if the communities don't get stronger, they are not going to be successful, not on the Internet, not outside.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Nacho. Thank you very much.
>> NACHO AMADOZ: Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: And Alberto, do you want to go next?
>> I had prepared a small presentation.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Fantastic. We have to go with our technicians over there.
>> They have to --
>> ALBERTO PEREZ: Well, in the meantime and following my procedures, let me say that we try to be multinational and include Catalan and -- our Web site is in (off microphone). Let me introduce myself. I'm Alberto Perez, and I'm going to show you my presentation briefly. I work for RedIRIS, which is a public agency of the Spanish government that belongs to the Secretary of the State for Telecommunications and Information Society, and our mission is to promote Internet in Spain.
So what I wanted to show, and now in my presentation is that whatever you do to promote Internet is good for Spanish because this is something basic that we need if Spanish wants to play an important role in the Internet, Spanish-speaking people must be there, because now a lot of content is generated by users. And so we have -- as he was saying before, we have 400 people speaking Spanish, but it's important how many of them are on line and have the skills to produce content, to produce applications and to give -- to have a relevant presence.
You can go ahead one. This is --
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Alberto, do you want to come over here -- so you can --
>> ALBERTO PEREZ: That's fine. We can go to the next one. This is just to show that we belong to the ministry of industry, tourism and commerce. What this slide shows which are our activities to promote Internet in Spain, so we manage the dot es registry. We also manage the research and education network. We have a national observatory for communications which provide information about the Internet in Spain, and then we have different programmes, dot programmes, to promote Internet in the health sector, justice and to fight the digital divide in the schools and education, some agreements with universities, and the utilization of content in Spain. So many areas are being covered. We have a budget of around 250 million euro devoted to promote Internet incorporation with other ministries, with the local governments and with the private sector. So please -- if I can -- okay. Thank you.
So I have to say that in relation to Spanish on the Internet, that this is not our main task, so we are not tasked with this goal of promoting Spanish, and of course we are one of the players that have many private and public payers to promote the Internet and Spanish. This does not mean that we are not relevant. As I was saying, anything we do to promote Internet in Spain helps to increase the presence of Spanish. If we are making a safer Internet with the digital (off microphone) or managing certs, this is helping people to go on-line, but then we have some specific programmes that do clearly have an impact in the promotion of Spanish in the Internet.
For example, we manage the .es domain name in a similar way to our colleagues, is a tag for content in Spanish. This could be Spanish for Spain or Spanish in many countries where Spanish is spoken. Thank you.
As you can see in relation to other TLDs, our differentiation is that we are focused on Spain and the Spanish language. And segmentation of the market, we focus on Spanish and foreigners that have interest in Spain. We consider .es as a tool to promote information inside Spain. It's a public research inside the government.
And before there was a focus on security, and there were many checks to ensure that the dot ES holders were established in Spain and that the domain name coincide with the name of the company or their trademark, but afterwards it was seen that the dot-com was considered safe so that security was not perceived by users and the policy was changed and the focus was more on ease of registration, so the rules were liberalized, but still there is a requirement to have some kind of link with Spain or the Spanish-speaking community, if you want to have (off microphone). We do not check these exactly, but people can file complaints afterwards.
So the result was a huge growth on the number of domain names from 80,000 in 2004, more than 1 million in 2008. But we have to be aware that the numbers are not everything, and we don't want merely people to have .es. We want them to use them, so we're trying to promote bundling of a domain name with value-added service, like main or (off microphone). And we know that part of our domain names are held by domainers that are mainly creating a secondary market but are not so much promoting what we want the usage of Spanish and .es on the Internet, so it's something that we have to find a balance as a policy problem first.
I want to highlight when we introduced the internationalized domain names in Spain, including (off microphone), the launch was announced in a very big event with the Spanish prime minister, two ministers and the president, the official academy of Spanish language in 22 countries. We included all the relevant additional code points for Castilian Spanish and the other officials languages in Spain, Catalan, (off microphone), so these are the code (off microphone) we have included in the (off microphone) too.
And the launch event was widely quoted in the press, radio, TV. Many media did not know what they were talking about. You can read that the (speaking in Spanish), there was a minister -- so the prime minister opens the usage of .es. No, they would have been existing for 50 years then. On the right-hand side you can read the Royal Hispanic Academy succeeds in the network. No, we consulted them momentarily. These are things you can read in the press. It was nice for us and the Spanish that you can see .es all over the place, in comics, in the news, you can click there and you would see the main news providing coverage to this launch of the IDNs in Spanish.
Something else we do is to manage international research and (off microphone) network, the tool that links universities and research centres. Now we have a -- 100 million euros to upgrade the network, a fiber network, very powerful one, that allows universities and research centres to have an enormous amount of bandwidth at their disposal for many projects. Our network is connected to networks in Europe and in other parts of the world, including in particular Latin America through (off microphone), as you can see on the right side, and this allows research centres and cultural centres to use these very powerful network to promote Spanish contents on their Web. Here you have a very interesting case, the case of (off microphone) (speaking in Spanish) American in education in TV association. And this has news done collaboratively by many groups in many different countries. These were before broadcast via satellite only, but now they have more than 8,000 hours of digital content stored in a server located very close to the central node of our network, and now we're supposed to have on-demand access to this type of content in Spanish, and then cooperatively by people in Spain and all the countries in Latin America and the United States.
Another nice project in which we are involved, Barcelona, one of the main opera theaters in the world has -- with this project an official (off microphone) in the universities, in several universities in Spain, Latin America, but also in France and Switzerland, where university students can go to a big hall and they will get through our high-speed network for universities live broadcast of these operas with 5.1 sounds, titles, high-definition, and there will be someone before and after the opera providing information about it. So that will mean that the network is there and can connect people and content in Spanish and (off microphone) in Spanish-speaking countries can now travel freely, and with the research network, play a small role in this kind of change. This is just to show the technology involved using multi-casting, which is not usually deployed in network but is deployed in the research network.
I personally work for RedIRIS and for the dot registry, so those things are the ones I'm nor more closely related to, but there are other interesting things that have to do with Spanish content. Content in Spanish, like, for example, Figot. It's a meeting place for professionals relating to the content. It's an event lasting 5 days with more than 3,000 people attending each day of the event, and there are many workshops and presentations and exchange of information. They are trying to foster the integration of market for digital content in Spanish, for Spain and Spanish-speaking countries.
And we have a programme, a corporation, Digitales, which is an agreement with universities to train people in universities to produce a digital content. So we are not going to be there, in the Internet, if we lack the skills to produce applications, the video games, the things other countries are doing, which is a market, and it's relevant also for the presence of our language on the Internet. So we're trying to devote some -- quite a lot of money to various universities to train people to produce this content.
For example, this is a very interesting -- Aporta, is a project about the reuse of public sector information. There is an obligation according to a European directive for public authorities to allow access and promote the reuse of information generated by public administration, and it can be used for commercial and noncommercial purposes, and our institution is promoting and coordinating this project in Spain.
We have the project (off microphone), which is education, educational project, to put together in a portal information for teachers, information in Spanish for teachers. So this is something that in theory should and could be open to other Spanish-speaking countries that could benefit, and there could be reciprocity. I'm sure that there are many people in Latin America preparing a lot of useful educational content that could be put together and exchanged, but there is a certain lack of coordination, at least in Spain we have tried to coordinate initiatives from different regional governments and even with participation of some private companies.
Chaval.es is a Web portal with specific content for minors and information for parents. A safe place where parents can find good content for their kids and also information about how to make good use of the Internet. So it provides content in Spanish, but it also provides information about how to make good use of the content. It is a small project but I wanted to show (speaking in Spanish) .es, but we have people traveling all over Spain, and sometimes you can see in Latin America, asking elderly people about their experiences in life, scanning their photographs or recording videos, so all these spread digital experiences are not lost and can be found in portal like this.
And we are also cooperating with the Spanish digital library, which is also cooperating in Europeana, a European project to digitize all the heritage in Spain. You find that Google is doing this much better, even with the Spanish institutions, so others are trying to organise themselves, and this is creating, I think, healthy competition to try to put all that available content on-line.
I could say then that our institution is making a very valuable contribution in many fields for the promotion of Spanish in the Internet, but of course we are aware that we are just one among many, and many more are needed, so that Spanish reach the degree of presence that is more related to the number of people, potential users. We find that some commercial services maybe not being offered. If I buy books, I go to Amazon and it's very nice service, but the equivalent in Spain is not that nice. If I have a kindle there are writes for many English books but not so many for Spanish, and this affects all the area, so it's just not a matter of the public administrations. It's very important to create a real market for companies too.
And last sentence here, I think there is a need for better coordination of (off microphone) and exchange of best practices at the American level. So I'm not telling what's been done in Spain, only by our institution, but someone should be able to give a whole picture of what Spain as a country, not our institution is doing, compared with other Latin American companies and launch common initiatives. So I think that is somehow missing as far as I know. So this was -- this was the presentation, and of course I'm open for questions or dialogue.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, very much. I'm impressed. You have many, many projects. I'm impressed about the projects about content. Perhaps you -- I can put you in contact with -- we have a network of education portals in Latin America (speaking in Spanish) and we have one in Argentina that's quite good. It's (off microphone). They are good friends of mine so maybe we can get something from this meeting. Thank you very much, Alberto, and Ana, would you go next? Thank you, Alberto. Gracias.
>> ANA OLMOS SANZ: Good morning. My name is Ana Olmos Sanz. I come from the Spanish IGF, and when the Spanish IGF met to discuss this Spanish -- the presence of Spanish in the network, in the Internet, and we invited -- were invited Cervantes couldn't come -- we invited, and we invited also the Spanish, and we had a stakeholder. We started to compile some data on the presence of the Spanish (off microphone), and as we were looking up the data we were wondering how these numbers had been registered, you know, what -- exactly what was being measured. And then the discussion came up, well, what it is that we want to have measured.
And it's not an easy question, and it's not easy to get that very relevant data. Is it production of content simply in terms of quantity that we want to measure? Is it number of pages or number of Spanish -- emails in Spanish or any other thing that is just an amount? Is it quality, like Olga said, they're trying to promote Wikipedia but not just about having articles, about having interest. It's about having quality interests. Yes, but how do you measure whether it's quality interest? I mean, if you want to know what's being done in Spanish on the Internet, how do you make sure that it is quality content that's being uploaded?
So why do we look for content in English? No doubt it is in part because it is content of quality. So do we want to know if non-native -- if non-native Spanish speakers are looking for content in Spanish because it's more relevant than what they find in other languages? Should we be measuring what Spanish-speaking people do on the Internet or should we also be measuring what non-Spanish -- I mean, non-native -- of course Spanish-speaking but maybe non-native speakers are doing on the Internet? So is it about available content or is it about net usage, for example, social networking? I don't have the numbers here, but I think the presence of Spanish-speaking -- of the Spanish-speaking community within social networks is actually quite -- very important.
So the question is there, and there was a proposal that maybe there should be some kind of barometer, some kind of group -- working group that would try to identify those things that we want to measure and maybe come up with strategies or techniques so that we can have some reliable data on all of these issues, which are very important. I mean, we have all agreed that the presence of Spanish or any other language for that matter on the Internet is very important in terms of boosting the information society. You cannot have -- you cannot include all citizens if you're not providing enough content and enough tools in their own language for them to use the Internet.
And then there was another thing that came up a couple of times, actually, about the presence of the language -- I mean, if it's not there, then it's dead, and also about the presence of books on-line. There's a challenge coming up with the digitalization of books. There's a balance and a struggle with copyright and other things that are many Spanish-speaking countries and they're all having a different approach to this.
Spain is actually the fourth -- I mean, I think it occupies the fourth place in terms of editorial power, and so this is -- this is really a challenge. I mean, if the -- the books are not going on-line because of different problems and because of different issues, people are going to be reading other things, because people are actually consuming Internet content more than other content, or increasingly more than other content. So there goes another challenge for a language.
And then I wanted to make another reflection. If we agree that we want to promote our language on the Internet, basically we have three strategies that we've identified. So one of them is translation. And we've seen that traditionally. English is also nowadays the lingua funka in science, and in Spain there has been a long tradition of translating science. That's not new content in Spanish. That's merely to make it available to the Spanish-speaking community, which is also a very valuable tool, but it's one of the things, and it has some problems, of course. Translations are not always perfect, and sometimes it might be misleading, and some people, when they are -- when they do speak other languages, they may tend to actually read the original content. So that's -- but that's a strategy.
Then there's competition. We might say that we don't want to accept this (off microphone) school, that we want to publish our articles, folk, in the -- for example, in the academic environment. This is a very difficult issue, because we are actually expected to publish in English. I mean (chuckle) the Spanish university expects you to publish in English because it's --
>> (inaudible)
>> ANA OLMOS SANZ: Yes, because you're expected to publish in certain reviews and certain magazines -- yeah, platforms that are English-speaking. And so should we change that? Should we do it the other way around? Should we give more value to those that are published in Spanish? Should we expect other -- other languages to also publish in Spanish because we are actually competing? So that's -- that's a strategy that's there. It's actually very complicated to change the status quo, but we -- you know, it might be an option to compete.
But then there's also -- instead of exactly competing, trying to identify what's singular and what's a characteristic of our society or our culture or academic tradition, and then in identifying those areas, maybe try to create a space where the Spanish-speaking community and the Spanish written articles and content are actually of importance. And it's not exactly a competition, it's finding your own place and it's being true to your society, to your culture and to your academic tradition.
So I think there are three strategies to promote -- to promote content and quality of content in your own language. And so that's -- that's the reflections I wanted to bring you today. Actually -- are there questions about what we want to do and how we can do it, and I wanted to agree with the previous speakers about the importance of providing the people content and tools and ways to, you know, be in the Internet, feeling comfortable, because they're actually using the language they are comfortable in. So I think that's it.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Ana, and you brought something that I noticed afterwards you were talking. Most of the things that I have written are written in English, about Internet and about regulations, and that brings me to another problem. I'm a university teacher in Buenos Aires, and I have given these papers to my students, and they are not very much willing to read them because they're in English. You know, Latin Americans, not everyone is able -- so much able to read in English so fluently as Spanish. We choose limiting but it's okay, because they handle their mother language.
So that brings me to this idea that I have written them in English because of course they faced a broader audience in the terms of where this content could be published or to which people could reach. But then when I go to my own community, they cannot read that, or they have some limitations to read them. So I never thought about that, so thanks for your comments because they brought this idea to me.
I would like to share with you a video that was sent by people from Microsoft. They couldn't come to the IGF, but they sent us some material about the usage of Native American -- what they are doing to promote the usage of Native American languages in the Internet through their software tools. Can we see the video? The video is in Spanish.
(music playing)
(showing video)
(speaking in Spanish)
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, and apologies that the video is in Spanish. It's about some tools that Microsoft has that -- I think it's translated in windows, and I'm not sure if office also. It's translated into several Native American languages. This video is about mabuchi. That's a community that lives in the south of the continent, in the south of Argentina and south of Chile, and for the accent, you can tell it's Chilean academy people that has been doing this with Microsoft. I think it's a very interesting experience, and I commend Microsoft for doing that. Unfortunately they couldn't come. They have done this with other Native American languages like Quechua, I'm not sure if guataneo, if interested I can put you in contact with them, get other information.
I would like to ask our friends, experts in the audience, how do translation tools could -- I personally have some difficulties in using translation tools so much because I find that there are some mistakes when the translation is made. I do some mistakes also, you can tell my Spanish is not perfect, my English may be worse. But how do you think from a positive perspective that these tools may evolve in the future? Do you think that someday in the near future, or in the long future, we may have a tool that will help us do what Ana -- Ana mentioned something interesting. She said when we translate the content, it's not that we are generating it. We are making it available for, but at the same time it's very good.
So would we have -- and it's -- if we have Pedro from Google here we may ask him that question because many people is using (off microphone) translator as a quick tool for making translation. Do you think that those tools will be very more accurate in the future? They are accurate today? Can we really tell that we rely on them today or that we will be relying on them in the future? I don't have the answer, and perhaps we don't have one answer. We have to have a hunch or ideas.
>> I don't have an answer, but I have some thoughts on the matter, because well, I work in the university, and we deal with a lot of English and Spanish and trying to understand what's -- what we find, not only in English, sometimes also in other languages. The fact that Google allows us this Google translator also allows you to any Web page, every level in Spanish. It is very helpful in identifying, you know, what this is about, in a quick view. You get the idea of what this is about, but it is not -- as of today it is not good enough to understand, really, the content, to be able to study the content. It is -- it is good enough to have a first approach and decide whether you want -- might want to look further into it.
I think translation tools have improved a lot, and -- but I especially like not these tools, these automatic tools, I like very much the communities that are formed in helping each other translate things. Not to -- you know, I have nothing to do with this -- with this whippage -- but this word reference form, it is so useful, you find there's a very big community of English-speaking people and Spanish-speaking people. I know there's always other languages, but I know the English-Spanish translation, and there's a lot of hope.
People will go there and they'll say, this is a content in the context of law or in the context of technology. I'm trying to translate this thing. How do you say this in Argentina? How do you say this in Spain? This is a very helpful community, and I think the Internet is providing a lot of tools, not automatic tools, they need tools for people to be able to access better translations and to get help in understanding things in other languages.
As for automatic tools, I don't know, I will -- I suppose it has -- there has been a big improvement. I suppose there will continue to be improvement, but I think that these communities are a lot more helpful.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I do use them as a dictionary, when I -- really they are very helpful when I am reading something, a word that I don't know, I quickly go to some translation tool and I use it as a dictionary or for some sentence, not for text, but really for sentences and for -- for specific words that I cannot find in my mind.
Do we have some comment or feedback from remote? Our friends in Latin America are sleeping now. No, they're all asleep, which is okay. What time is it in Argentina now? It's six hours earlier, so it's very early.
Okay. Do we have any other comment from our friends in the audience? Great. I would like to make some last comments --
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Sure?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Olga?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Sure. I'm sorry, I couldn't see you. That's a camera. Could you tell us your name please?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER (off microphone) from Telefonica. And a couple of comments about Spanish on the Internet and the same for other languages, Latin languages. I think at least from the point of view of our culture from Spain, two main things could explain the lack of content. One is a very important one that I think is the cultural difference between as Latins in other parts of the world. Our culture is very much, let's say, open to contact and interacting with people in direct, and things are changing, of course, but perhaps from people other than 40 years old, for example, the use age of Internet is not so high as in other cultural parts of the world. It could explain why we are not creating so many contents.
Another thing -- another thing that could explain also the difference is the difference in access. Things have improved very much during the last years, and there's been a lot of private and public investment in access both in Spain and in Latin America, but still the access to the Internet is not so high, both from the point of view of network but also from the affordability compared to other countries, other spaces to the -- let's say the hardware.
I think that the big difference is that perhaps now the creation of content and the access to content from the mobile platform is changing very fast, and that as long as -- especially in Latin America, the access to Internet -- well, say, the access to the network via mobile is like four times higher than the fixed network. I think that this could make a difference in the near future.
And then just from the point of view of my company, we are trying also to create communities and contents. We are especially aware at Telefonica Foundation, and we also have communities that communicate thousands of schools from both sides of the ocean, and for example tools for students and just this month has been opened in Spain, now have 360 experience that comes from Telefonica in Argentina and now it's also going to be opened in Spain and other countries. And that's all. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thanks to you, and I think that Telefonica has a remarkable place because it's -- it's -- I would say a globally Spanish company in Latin America and has a privileged position in Latin America and in Spain. So you are kind of even American-oriented, so you can watch the region from a very wide perspective, and yes, you have several tools and you do a lot of events and content in Spanish, I can tell that, and especially for kids and for students, and that's a project in Argentina, so it's nice that you pointed that out. Thank you for that.
Are there other comments from the audience? Gorka? Gorka? Any comment about your native language in your region?
>> Yeah, hi, my name is Gorka Rita. I'm coming from the Basque, that's in the north part of Spain. And I would like to share with you the experience of my language, Basque, called (off microphone) in my language, and experiences on the Internet. I have to say first that Basque is not a Latin language, neither Native American. It's one of the oldest languages in Europe and maybe in the world, so -- but also for Basque and the Basque cultural community has been really important to bring into the Internet.
I just -- I agree with your -- with the -- with the underlying of the importance of the content. I think that is really -- that it's really important to become -- small language is really important. We are 2,000,100 in the community we live in, but our Basque language and culture, it transcends our political boundaries. It's spoken in Navarra, in another part of Spain, but also in the south of France, it's called La Cote Basque. It's also spoken in other countries, also in -- there's a very big and important diaspora, in Argentina, also in Chile, in Venezuela, in Mexico and in the (off microphone) states. So it has been very important for the Basque and culture to be in touch with this community, that community that they don't allocate it just in our geographical area.
So we have developed some tools that has been really interesting as an idea -- not talking about the furniture. It is the application for the -- for making (off microphone) about the language, it was developed by the leading group of mass communication in the Basque country (speaking in Spanish) in my language, and it offers you also other translations to those languages, because there are people who living who speak English and also speak Basque, but not Spanish, not other, people who speak French and Basque but not Spanish. So they offer translation and that's also for those communities who are living abroad and another really interesting portal is caston.net, that it's a portal for (off microphone) and the Basque on-line learning that I consider that also is -- that I consider is also really important. So.
We have also promote and develop software application in Basque, as people, I think they should see that their software in home language, and for finishing, I -- all this involvement of the Internet community with the language, there's also a project to become or to put all this really engaged community with the language under a cultural linguistic top-level domain following -- following the way that the Catalan -- they open -- yeah, we were really grateful to you because I think you really opened a very, very interesting -- interesting way. So that's what I would like to share with you. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Gorka. Do we have any other comment from the audience? We have like ten minutes.
>> (off microphone) also speaking. (off microphone) capacity. I have actually a provoking question for the Spanish-speaking people here. Yes, get yourself ready. You know, in a lot of communities, organisations, politics, dynamics change. When you look at the European Union, the main language was French and English, but mainly French. With the energy now it's business. English is also in business and science and politics in general, although we have (off microphone) official languages at the United Nations, but even when you look at IGF, English is the main language because you have language barrier if you look at other people, you know, they're not that much -- they don't have that accessibility towards Spanish as a language. Most of us learn our English at school.
But referring to the observation you make about the growing importance of Spanish in United States, and it will take over like in 2012, reflecting about the change in dynamic, they think that one day English will be -- excuse me, maybe Spanish will be the lingua funka and the world will take over in areas of business and science. What are your ideas on that?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: That will be easy for me. (chuckle) Well, I have a provocative question to yours. How many -- we are holding this workshop in English. How many of us has English as a native -- as a mother tongue? One? So that's -- I do this question in many of the meetings that I go, that we are from several countries of the world, but we use English as a -- it's a common language, which is -- must be very good for the native speakers of English. I don't know. I'm not a -- maybe others can -- oh, Dennis, you want to --
>> Microphone.
>> As the only English speaker here, but I'm Irish (laughter). Well, it does, because the Irish language, the Celtic language, which is associated with Basque, the language, and with the Scots Gaelic and with other languages, was of course the dominant language in Ireland for many centuries, but because of the -- the occupation by England, because we were part of the United Kingdom and Ireland, particularly after the union in 1801, the economic advantage of speaking English was the predominant cultural driver for moving everybody to English from Irish.
Now, there are still speakers in our -- who speak Irish. It's the official language of the EU. The number of real speakers who use it as their only language from time to time is minuscule. I think there's nobody on the island now who only speaks Irish. When I was a youngster that was true. About 100,000 people in the west of Ireland to only spoke Irish. That's completely got. The pervasive media -- pervasive now in media are English. More young people speak in English. They talk about schedules. I keep telling them there's no so much in the English language as a schedule.
So I'm just pointing out that there are movements in language that are driven by the dominant culture, economic affairs and so on.
One of the things that the Internet offers, I think, is the opportunity to support the continuation of languages, to provide an alternative, and that's why it is very important, but I think nobody should be really upset that there aren't many millions of pages in some obscure language. Nobody should be upset that now English is the dominant language in scientific publications.
When I was a youngster, Russian was the language that I had to learn to be able to translate, so I know (speaking in Russian) is the only Russian that I remember. A century ago and even less it was German was the dominant language. You could not conduct scientific research or publish without publishing in German. So my only point, not making a terribly important point, is that time changes, and the dominant culture will drive the dominant language. It's neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but you -- the idea that the Internet will support the continuation of languages is, of course, very important, and if I may put on my ICANN hat, we're doing everything we can to support that.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you for bringing this comment out.
>> The other side of the coin is that while probably is -- the English have a high importance in terms of business or -- I have a (off microphone), a link that I was finding on the Internet. That I was mentioning a research was conducted about the value of the language. Those researchers from Spain concluded that the value of the language is more than 15% of the GDP of the country. So while there are new opportunities in adopting a language like English for making business, that is also a high value of the Spanish as our native language, so we have to take care of that.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you. Thank you very much, and with my ICANN hat, I know that ICANN is doing remarkable efforts to -- and it has been really quick, because I remember in our first IGF in Athens, the first I went to one of the -- one of the first workshops that were held about IDNs, and it was really a big question mark how difficult it could be, how challenging it would be for the coordination of the critical Internet resources, and now we see it as a reality. So I really commend ICANN for the big effort that they have done to put this in place.
Just for finishing, we have more comments from the audience? Any comments from abroad? Okay. Great.
>> This is from the remote participation, from Armenia. They want to ask, don't you think that with the advancement of automatic translation tools and of artificial intelligence, the situation with multi-lingualism will drastically change?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Does anyone want to answer? It's three people want to answer.
>> Hello, my name is (off microphone). I'm from Belarus. I want to say that 96% of our international traffic is going to Russia. Only 6% to the west countries. And for me, during my -- learning English, I realized that there is not Internet except Russian Internet content. The big Internet in English, and even now when Google announced Google translator service and they made it available in the Google home browser, it made it much easier to get access to their data, to their content, for example, English content. But it's inconvenient to read it when some statements are -- misstates.
And I guess it's -- this problem is now in the servers, which do this -- calculation power, where to choose, where to put it. I guess we need to wait and Google will serve it. It's a problem only on CPU, processing and the generated content which loads it in the database of Google, for example.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much. We had other comments for the question. Nacho, do you want to comment also, Dennis? Okay.
>> NACHO AMADOZ: I wanted to link to what has been said before regarding that use of common tongue, being English, being Spanish, being whatever. I guess there has always been a common tongue, right? Lingua franca, there has always been one, and that should mean no problem to any other language. It's English now, it was Spanish before, it's been French as well. It doesn't mean some problem. It could create some problem, regardless, for example, the publication of your articles directly in English, not thinking it twice to do it in Spanish. But that does not mean that your students speak less Spanish or that you speak less Spanish. So is it a problem? No. Sometimes it can be used as a tool to create problems, yes, but as such it is not a problem.
And regarding the question from remote, in the artificial intelligence and the tools to create (off microphone), they may help with documents, but they do not help with the most important thing in languages, which is direct communication with others. It does not help unless a chip to insert it in your brain is created that immediately translates what you're saying. They will be helpful on the Internet but they will not be helpful in speaking with others, and that's what creates the rest of the chain, and that's it.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Nacho.
>> With your permission, can I raise something slightly different? I spoke about the IDN effort that ICANN is working in. There are a couple of things -- there are a couple of things that I'd like to highlight. One, the string for an IDN, there are technical and other constraints on what strings that can be accepted. There's an example that's caused a little bit of controversy, which is the request from Bulgaria, which is now public knowledge because they have made it known. And unfortunately and regrettably, the technical constraints are the confusion constraints, the comparison with ASCII. So people should be aware that it's not that ICANN is refusing or rejecting requests, it's that there are technical and other constraints that have to be taken into being.
At the signing of an agreement with UNESCO, which was normalized yesterday, should hopefully help in that regard. So that's the first point I'd like to make. The second point I'd like to make is to do with the IDN table associations at TLD. Now, ICANN is not an authority on scripts and languages, and the fact that we put a table up on the Web doesn't mean that we're authorizing or confirming or standardizing a script table for a language in a particular script.
Work needs to be done in the language communities to look at the script tables and to make sure that the script tables that are used by one TLD or ccTLD for a particular language are the same as are used by other gTLD and the other ccTLDs. Who is coordinating that? The last thing I would like to see is a script -- let's give an example. A large number of gTLDs in a particular script targeted a particular language, but the script tables are slightly different.
Imagine the confusion that will cause. Mind you, there's enough confusion because typing from a keyboard to translating it to appear on the screen, to turn it on to the screen in the application that turns it into a Web address, there are many mappings and it's not clear what those mappings are, but assuming that they're all correct, the IDN tables are extremely important, and it's up to the language communities to make sure somehow, and I don't see any particular mechanism in place yet to do that -- to make sure that these tables are consistent for all the -- for the same language in all the TLDs. How that should be done is something I think you should be -- it should be talking about, because I think it's going to turn out to be important.
And there was a third point I wanted to make but I've forgotten. Thank you. (laughter)
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much. Eric?
>> (speaking in Spanish)
>> OLGA CAVALLI: There are people that don't understand. The transcribing can't be done if we are speaking in Spanish. So just for you -- it's not happening in this small -- these small rooms.
>> I know. I know, for that reason I will speak some Spanish.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I can translate after for the rest.
>> Well, the more interesting of lingua franca. That will change. Move from one moment Latin, then German, and one moment Spanish, and now it's English. Maybe in the future it will be Spanish again. We speak more Spanish in the United States and other countries.
I want to divide the discussion about the presence of the native language Internet in two parts. One, the technical side related with the (off microphone) and other part is related to the content. In part of the domain names in Latin America, six or seven ccTLDs are -- support IDNs directly to the domain names, and that's because the native language in Latin America don't have written version. They only have oral version and use Spanish characters, like "ene," like folk always with accent to try to express their own mother language. That means that only in the countries in Latin that have that relation with native language will be appear, Is special character.
For the ccTLDs in the Caribbean not a big deal, in the English spoken countries. The French spoke countries in the Caribbean are supported, started to have IDNs for their own ccTLDs. (off microphone) IDNs don't exactly mean they have a presence or more presence of native language in the domain names. The quality of the domain name for instance in ccTLDs that have the ability to have characters, different contacts than ASCII is only a few ones. Don't have a very long quantity of the domain name that could be syncing if we start that -- seen if we start using that kind of language.
In more parts I follow the idea of the (speaking in Spanish) from the presence of the Spanish among our language. That is not so true that the mother language -- the principal language in the Internet is English. It's more the presence of another language. Maybe we have more -- no well-known sites in English, but blogs, newspapers, Web sites, company Web sites, institutional Web sites (off microphone) Web sites are in our language, especially, for Latin America in Spanish, but it's not only about the quantity of the information. It's about more the quality of the information.
The product is -- Alberto, is about the quality. It's not exactly about the quantity, because I remember when we started the product of connectivity of the schools in Peru. When they want to teach something about the Peruvian history, it was not written by Peruvians, so it wasn't exactly the version you would read in the books, it was more other version, but the local ones don't produce the content. And maybe the discussion about the contents is more important than the discussion about the technical -- in the discussion about the technical side. We can give the supporting characters and IDNs if it's necessary. But if we don't (off microphone) to create content, to share content in their own language, could be complicated, and especially for native language in Latin America, don't have a written version. Tools like -- give you blogs or tools like (off microphone) blogs could be more useful more times because it's more easy to (off microphone) to have for the native language the opportunity to express something, they need to learn to write and learning to write in Spanish, because it's the way with the characters, and then learn to write in their mother language it's a problem of education, it's a problem of long-term public policies about which is our lingua franca. In Peru we have Quechua, which is our language but our Web sites are only in Spanish. You don't learn Spanish. There's no problem about Internet, it's a problem about you don't come be part of the society directly. And the same problem appear in all countries that have (off microphone) and our language -- be part of the official world, be part of the (off microphone) world, be part of the (off microphone) or be excluded of that kind of world. So in conclusion, the real problem is about content and the (off microphone) capacities is not only ideas. It's very useful, the IDNs, but it's only a superficial solution.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Eric. I think we have to leave the room in a while. Do we have more comments from our audience? Do we have more questions?
>> It's again from Armenia, remote participation. They want to ask, is there any report about the usage of scripts in Internet, that you are aware of?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I am not, but we have some experts here. Do we have a report about usage of scripts in the Internet? We may get that information in our mind and we can publish it perhaps in some group on Internet, Facebook or somewhere. We don't have that information yet, in this moment. So apologies for that. We cannot answer the question.
No more comments, no more questions from remote. So we have more questions than answers than what we started, which is good, because we have things to have in mind from now on, and I would say that from your comments and your valuable presentations, education is a key issue, involvement of communities is a key issue. We should watch how this automatic -- these automatic tools may evolve in the future. That could be also important. And Internet may bring us the space for -- it's important, what you said, Eric, about many people don't know how to write their languages and they talk only in their languages. I was talking yesterday with a fellow from Africa and he was telling me that each of the tribes, they just don't know how to write what they talk, but they talk and it's their language and part of their culture. So perhaps videos and videotaping also added to the content, or as part of the content, could be good to think about.
So thank you very much for being with us today. Languages is one of my hobbies and my passions. I speak some of them. I would like to speak more of them. So apart from being an engineer, perhaps I would love to be in linguistics sometime in my life. So this is a very important space for me, and thank you very much for participating this morning with us. Thank you.
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