March 2016


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The Masterclass, Web Optimisation for International Trade, was a learning opportunity like no other. Offered by the Centre for Language Learning (CLL), the Masterclass was part of Language and Competitiveness, an RDI-funded project conceptualised and led by Dr Beverly-Anne Carter, Director of the CLL at The UWI St. Augustine.

The Masterclass was practical and thought-provoking, with a resource manual, exercises, and checklists. Led by Sarah Carroll of Grow Global, the Masterclass covered topics such as:

• The International Web Opportunity
• How the International Web Works
• Visibility on the International Web
• Options for an International Digital Strategy
• Building and Optimising an International Website

This is an era that affords businesses opportunities aplenty. Information is accessible to potentially everyone, regardless of the GDP of a country. The International Web has become a virtual continent, the eighth continent, inhabited by potentially every human being. Citizenship on the eighth continent means crossing every tangible border, especially physical and geo-political borders.

Yet there remains one unidirectional border still in place for speakers of English – the language border. It is time for speakers of English to cross that border.

Other world citizens have long dispensed with the hurdles of language communication by investing in and prioritising the teaching and learning of English. But it has not usually been a two-way street. Speakers of English often remain complacent and confident in the false idea that English speakers have the edge, because everyone else seems to speak English. This actually puts others at an advantage, and puts English speakers at clear disadvantage.

One of the hallmarks of an international website is basic and multilingual Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). As it stands, 70% of online search enquiries are not in English. International communication requires multilingual and intercultural thinking. The benefits of being able to communicate with overseas colleagues, students, clients, suppliers and buyers are enormous, as are the reverse – the costs of lacking that ability and facility. Sometimes, there may be only one chance to impress.

Participants were told “Don’t just focus on one country and one language. Adapt your website and optimise it for international trade. Get it right in English first. Make it good for home-based users first, but reach out – go beyond English.”

Apart from multilingual content, optimisation also includes structuring each website for mobile devices, home page design, navigation, and creating calls to action.

Of the seven billion citizens of the planet, well over three billion are internet users, close to half the world, and the number is growing daily. Of these, one in four people now use social networks. Almost 50% of internet users are in Asia, with China and India sharing one billion and 28 million users. From China alone, come 674 million users (50% of China’s population), and 354 million come from India (28% of India’s population).

The top 10 countries by number of internet users include only three countries that use English as an official or main language, namely, India, the USA and Nigeria. But all of these three countries are multilingual. India, in second position with 354 million internet users, has 447 living languages (not dialects) of which 63 are institutional (with statutory recognition), one of which is English. The USA, in third position with 281 million users (87% of its population), has 216 living languages, three of which are institutional (English is only a de facto national language in the USA, not a de jure one). Nigeria, in seventh position with 93 million users (51% of the population), has 520 living languages, of which 20 are institutional, including English.

Given the status of English as an international lingua franca, and its presence on every continent, it is not surprising that English is still the top language of internet users, with 852 million users, but Chinese (Mandarin) is not far behind, with 705 million internet users from China and other countries. Although only 50% of China’s population currently uses the internet, the number of Chinese users is almost 2.5 times that of the USA. When the number of Chinese users rises to almost 90% of their population, there will be five times the number of Chinese users vs American. This has huge international implications for language use, and that includes us in the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas.

The main UWI websites are considered to be in relatively good shape, and there are many good websites across the English-official Caribbean. (Interestingly, Bevil Wooding, of T&T, is one of seven gatekeepers of the internet.) However, what nearly all these websites are lacking is the multilingual, international approach.

The Caribbean has at least 70 known languages, only six of which have official status, namely, Dutch, English, French, Haitian, Papiamentu and Spanish. Four of these are international European languages used on most continents. These six official languages are a start, and Mandarin Chinese is next. Searches in these languages (and possibly related languages) can pick up sites with content in these languages. As one concrete example, school-leavers from Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao (the ABC islands) speak four languages a matter of course – Papiamentu, Dutch, English and Spanish. They customarily choose Holland (which offers degrees in English) and the USA. Why not UWI?

Historically, Trinidad & Tobago has been the Babel of the Caribbean, with a few heritage languages still surviving (Spanish, Patois (French Creole), Hindustani (Bhojpuri), Cantonese and Arabic among them), and a number of immigrant languages on our shores, and right at The UWI, St. Augustine campus. Interestingly, google.tt can be searched in five languages. Everything is in place for not just a bilingual, but a multilingual T&T. The choice of internet language will depend on the choice of market.

In these days of STEAM, not STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics), the Language and Competitiveness project could not have been more timely. Closing off the week was the launch of the website of the project Language and Competitiveness. Language competence offers the chance to grow in cultural sensitivity and respect, shows interest, builds trust, and provides the platform for effective communication.

Jo-Anne Ferreira is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics in the Department of Modern Languages & Linguistics, a sister department of the CLL, in the Faculty of Humanities and Education.