Brussels, 11/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - According to a Eurobarometer survey published by the European Commission on Wednesday 11 May, 90% of EU internet users prefer to access websites in their own language, and 55% use a foreign language at least occasionally when they are online. Forty-four per cent of European internet users also stated that they felt that they were missing out on interesting information because web pages were in a language they did not understand, and only 18% of them buy products online in a foreign language. These results confirm the need to invest in online translation tools, so that EU internet users are not deprived of online information or products due to a lack of language skills. “If we are serious about making every European digital, we need to make sure that they can understand the web content they want. We are developing new technologies that can help people who cannot understand a foreign language”, said Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes.
The Eurobarometer study shows that the lack of language skills means that not everybody has access to many quality websites on an equal basis. On average, in the 23 member states studied, half of all internet users can read online content in a foreign language. However, this figure hides great variations: between 90% and 93% of Greeks, Slovenians, Cypriots, Luxembourgers and Maltese indicated that they were prepared to surf the net in another language, compared to just 9% of UK citizens, 11% of the Irish, 23% of Czechs and 25% of Italians. English remains the main language of communication on the internet. Additionally, online shopping is an area in which people prefer to use their own language: only 18% of European internet users often or almost always make their purchases online in another language and 42% said that they had never done so. The European Commission is aware of the problem. It is currently managing 30 research and innovation projects in favour of language technologies which may help internet users to access information available in other languages. The project iTRANSLATE4, for example, will lead to the first internet portal to offer free online translations between more than 50 languages from Europe and elsewhere and to help users simultaneously to compare a number of translations proposed by the most frequently used systems (such as Google, Bing, Systran, Trident and Linguatec). The EU is contributing €2 million to the project. META-NET, a research project born from collaboration between the private sector, researchers, the public sector and citizens, has received €6 million from the EU. It aims to build a technological alliance for a multilingual Europe and the alliance already has more than 200 members. (I.L./transl.fl)