Apr
29
Why is Spanish taking so long to dominate the Web?
Spanish is one of the world’s most widely-spoken languages with roughly 400 million speakers, but the Spanish language’s cyber-presence continues to lag behind other Western languages. Both French (with 130 million native speakers) and German (with 100 million) have more web pages in their respective languages than Spanish.
Project Gutenberg, which offers free electronic books, reportedly has a 180 titles in Spanish available. Sounds decent until you hear that the number of e-books available in English is 21,453. Yes, you read that correctly. OK, so perhaps it’s not a priority for Project Gutenberg to publish e-books in Spanish, but it sure seems as though the Spanish language is getting short shrift on the Web, especially when compared to English.
The Instituto Cervantes and Fundéu BBVA are trying to turn things around but it doesn’t seem like enough. Universities in Spanish-speaking countries aren’t picking up enough of the slack. According to Webometrics, which tracks the number of university articles visible on the internet, there is no Spanish-language university among the top 50 universities. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is at No. 59 while Universidad Complutense de Madrid, considered one of Spain’s best universities, is at 173.
What’s it going to take to get with the program? Where is the Spanish content and why isn’t more of it being produced?
Some random facts and figures about Spanish in cyberspace that I read here:
12. Number of languages that dominate the World Wide Web. There are more than 6,000 languages spoken in the world.
3.8. Percent of internet pages written in Spanish.
60. Percentage of Google web searches that are done in Spanish come from Latin America.
351,000. Number of articles available in Spanish at Wikipedia. There are more than 2 million Wikipedia articles available in English.
.005. Percent of scientific papers that are published in Spanish and available on the Web.
Interesting - maybe it’s down to the fact that Spanish culture tends to be oral. I read somewhere that there are 2 mobile/cell phones for every person in Spain - and have you noticed that Spanish people rarely leave messages on an answering machine? I can’t remember the name but there is a British company which has a product which changes spoken messages into text on cell phones (great in meetings etc when it’s impossible to answer the phone) and they were talking about this as one of the main problems for breaking into the very lucrative Spanish market
What’s worse, Dutch with about 30 million speakers worldwide has more articles on Wikipedia. And then you have to realize that loads of Dutch people prefer to use the English version of Wikipedia.
Ok, it’s only one webproject, but it’s just weird.
Maybe if DSL wasn’t so expensive people could get on the web and do something …
Carl; are you talking about Spain or Latin-America? In the US it’s quite expensive I guess, but here in Europe (yes, that includes Spain) it’s rather cheap and I think more than 75% of the people have access to a computer with an internet connection.
I just canceled mine from Telefonica because it was like 78 Euros per month times 1.55 for the exchange rate (ok can’t blame Telefonica for that) I probably need to shop more. Need to look into Ya.com
Spain has the most expensive & slowest internet of any of the major European countries and unfortunately all of the infratructure belongs to Telefonica. I worked in Ya.com and their network is on telefonica so if there are any problems you have to go back to the big boys to get them solved…
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/Pantallas/redes/sociales/blogs/reinan/Internet/elpepurtv/20080430elpepirtv_2/Tes has some interesting numbers (in Spanish)
I think the explanation is very obvious.
The percentage of computers with an internet connection per for example 1000 people in South America is very low compared to the same percentage in English speaking countries.
This means more people in English speaking countries have direct connection with the internet.
It is the same thing with Dutch people Ramses, almost everybody has an internet connection at work, at home or both.
Next to that is the difference in cultures. Spanish talking cultures are very different in their information archivation but they seem to change it more and more.
Chris, you’re right about the cultural differences (oral vs written). Spaniards generally prefer to call rather than email, whereas in Anglo culture we like to see stuff in writing and would much rather jot off an email or leave a voicemail message instead of playing phone tag. Also, Telefonica is the worst. I wonder if any of their execs actually use their Internet service? And regarding slow internet connection in Spain, one can’t discount the eMule factor. Too many freeloaders piggybacking on their neighbor’s open wifi connection. I’d like to see somebody do a study about that! (Number of people who pirate internet service from paying customers.)
Carl is right, it has to do with the number of computers, as simple as that. It has to do with money. Most of the Spanish speaking countries are not rich. Nothing to do with the Spanish culture being more or less oral. The Spanish culture is “written” enough in my opinion. By the way, what “Spanish” culture? The culture from Spain?, from which part of Spain? from Mexico?, from Argentina?, from Cuba? Do you really think we have that much in common? I think we don’t, I think we (the Spaniards) have MUCH more in common with the Portuguese, the French or the Italians, for instance, eventhough we don’t speak the same language. I don’t think there’s an homogeneous Spanish speaking market. That’s a mistake many companies tend to make.
Carl , you can get ADSL2 (up to 20Mb) for less than 40 euros with any company, there are many of them, why sticking to Telefonica?. ADSL up to 3Mb for 10-20 Euros. It’s not that expensive and the voice calls within Spain are for free. The problem is the so called “digital-divide”. Broadband is not included in the definition of “universal service” by the European Union, and, as consequence of that, many rural areas don’t have access to ADSL. No broadband in small towns and villages. Even in some cities. there can be problems, if installing a digital exchange is not considered profitable by Telefonica. If broadband was included in the “universal service” definition, they would be forced to provide ADSL in the whole territory, profitable or not. It’s a shame, really.
Roberto - Spain has long ceased to be a poor country, and is now richer than Italy, but has one of the lowest reading rates in Europe (in terms of books bought). As far as culture is concerned the same can be said of English - that of a small island, that of the US, of Australia - do we have so much in common? And what about Spanish speakers in the US?
There are poorer countries with far more take up of internet and the idea that the internet represents the future. In China and India the use of the internet is huge (while probably being a very small % of the total population). I agree about the problems of rural connection but I live in a village of 800 people in Huesca with both ADSL and a local wi-fi connection. But how much of the population in Spain is rural? The vast majority live in cities.
Well Chris, you’re right, Spain’s not a poor country anymore, thank God, but unfortunately, most of the Spanish speaking countries are. Spain represents only 10% of the world’s Spanish speakers. We are a small drop in the ocean.
If the Spanish language is to dominate the web someday, it will be mainly Mexico’s “fault”. Mexico is the most important Spanish speaking country, in my opinion. If Mexico finally turns to be a developed country, the usage of the Spanish language in the Internet will get a massive boost.