The Internet is English
Posted on January 20, 2004 @ 17:57 in Blogosphere
It's time again for the 2004 Bloggies weblog awards (via Liz). There are only four non-English weblogs nominated. Three Spanish weblogs and one Portuguese weblog in the "Best Latin American weblog" category. All the European weblogs are in English. Four token "ethnic" weblogs then. Where are all the other languages?
I don't know how exactly the nomination procedure went, but it seems we could have submitted non-English weblogs between January 1 and 12, but there appears no system in place for dealing with those non-English weblogs. I wonder how the "three panels of 50 voters" could judge Dutch, Norwegian, and Polish weblogs on their merits, had they received enough nominations. The result is that, judging from the 2004 Bloggies, the Blogosphere, and by extension the internet, appears overwhelmingly English.
In order to receive some recognition for your weblogging efforts, you either have to blog in English, or you will have to depend on a localized version of the Bloggies, such as the Dutch Bloggies (2002 and 2003). There is no subtitling for weblogs and nobody likes subtitling much anyway. Language is a better barrier than any, ever so porous, geographical border, and, I guess, online more so even than offline, because online we lack both our physical bodies — to wave, point, grunt, and raise eyebrows — and the necessity to make ourselves understood in a surrounding where nobody speaks your language.
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Will there be dutch bloggies this year? I didn't hear anything about it yet...
Posted by gronical on February 04, 2004 @ 22:11
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