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Japanese developers launch e-translator

By Dominic Maher

Published: Wednesday 25 November 1998

Developers at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Tokyo are developing a system to enable Internet users from all 185 UN member countries to converse with each other in their native language on the Web.

First revealed in April 1996, Universal Networking Language (UNL) is the ongoing work of more than 120 computer and linguistics experts. The aim is to enable users to communicate over the Internet in their native tongues, with people who speak other languages - a translation process known as known as 'enconverting'.

Ian Keene, principle analyst at DataPro, had his reservations. "It could be tricky," he said. The problem lies with the Internet being a global medium, he added, and if documents are used in business, "the content has to be precise", or important issues could be missed out.

Keene added: "Companies wouldn't want to rely on a machine to convert the text for them."

Developers hope to be able to support languages from all the 185 UN member nations by 2005.