10 Years of E-commerce Surfing, International Communication and French Interpretation
The medium for intercultural communication and exchange of information that has brought a new age in companies’ internal and external communication is the Internet. The World Wide Web is the type of medium that had fully or partly replaced the old means of communication, which has brought intercultural business communication to a new age and has given it a new outlook. There are several questions that arise when we talk about the language policies that companies apply to intercultural communication, and they can be summarized to: How is multilingualism realized through websites? What role does English play with reference to other languages? How are international and domestic customers treated? Which languages are used in the communication with them? Some of the international railway companies that had been in the business long before the WWW was established will be discussed so that these questions receive their answer. One of the examples will feature a German railway company that offered their domestic customers information on their services in German only, while the company website presented information in English to the same customers, and this was noticed by a German to English Translator.
Whereas most businesses were suspicious about the Internet and the World Wide Web and hesitated whether to invest in them in the 1990s when the WWW and the Internet became more commercial, nowadays a company website is a must. Moreover, all types of communication and business transactions are encompassed in the principle of e-commerce, with advertising, public relations, marketing, sales being the most sought after. Brochures, reports, advertisements, manuals and catalogues are what the websites usually make a combination of as business text genres. Videos, slide shows, audio presentations and animation are among the other types. Therefore, we cannot but mention that today information and communication own their smooth functioning to language in the first place. 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. Defining the target audience is the first step towards selecting the language of a website. For example, only Portuguese speakers will be able to understand the language of a website designed in Portuguese. However, it could gain much wider audience if it is translated into English by a English to Portuguese Translator.
Today most barriers have been removed and websites can be produced in languages that do not even contain Latin characters, though initially the technical problems that existed before other languages were more. The expectations and demands of modern interpersonal communication, business and research had to be met or even exceeded, so in 1994 a conglomerate was set up which should provide all the necessary technical equipment in order to realize this in all languages and writing systems. 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. Setting their own parameters was the novelty different cultures could experience, and this was made possible by dropping out the cultural characteristics accompanying the development of software. For example, a French Translator can translate software parameters that can run for France with the French conventions, which means that international audience should not be targeted by selecting English as the only language of the Web site.
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