| Monique van Dusseldorp on Tue, 7 Apr 1998 18:49:44 +0200 (MET DST) |
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| <nettime> English vs local language |
[Originally submitted to online-e.-T] The issue of addressing people in English is an interesting one. As said, the top countries in terms of Internet use are those where a lot of people have a good knowledge of English, either as their first or second language. I come from the Netherlands, and a strong emphasis on learning languages in education, combined with an internationally oriented trade sector, and a tradition of showing television programmes in their original form with subtitling (instead of dubbing, as is the habit in Germany, France and many other markets), makes for a population with a pretty advanced proficiency in the language. So most of the present on-line population is quite happy using English language resources on the web. The fact that this is so might however give the English/American content or service producer a false sense of opportunity. As long as there is a void, and local offerings (and to some degree, localised offerings) still need to catch up, there is of course a decent chance to get Dutch visitors/customers. However, as soon as a local counterpart can offer a similar service, I predict these services will be preferred. Compare it to the television market: me and my countrymen are used to an avalanche of English language material on television. We enjoy it, and with or without the use of subtitles, most people can understand it as well. We also, through our widespread cable system, receive channels like the BBC, CNN, as well as Belgian and German channels. The Belgian offer broadcasts in Flemish, which is Dutch with a difference. American produced television shows are popular and widely known. Everyweek I receive the weekly ratings of the ten programmes that scored most viewers, and the ten programmes that the audience rated best. Week after week, not a single non-Dutch produced programme makes it to the top ten for audience share (unless you count international soccer games as co-productions of course), and as for ratings, the whole last season only the television show ER consistently made it into the top 10, along with the occasional Hollywood movie. My guess is that a lot of the US content will go the way of music channel MTV: for a while very popular in the Netherlands, they have now been completely pushed aside by Dutch music channel TMF. In Germany the same has happened by music channel Viva. (It must be added, in both cases, that MTV's strategy in many cases resulted in their removal from the cable systems). With the low barriers to entry, Dutch content and service producers still have a chance to gain market dominance even though their entry into that market might seem quite late. No fears for US domination in that respect.. -- Monique van Dusseldorp mailto:[email protected] http://www.vandusseldorp.com Kruidenhof 107, 1112 NX Diemen, Netherlands tel +31 655 364 699, fax +31 20 570 7273 * to subscribe regular: mailto:[email protected] * to unsubscribe regular: mailto:[email protected] * to subscribe digest: mailto:[email protected] * to unsubscribe digest: mailto:[email protected] * list archives: http://www.isys.hu/online-europe -----End of forwarded message----- -----End of forwarded message----- --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: [email protected]