The Web Is Divided Along Language Lines

Says the New Scientist.

Well, makes sense, doesn't it?  It's impossible to read web pages in languages with unknown scripts, and even when the script is the same, but the language is different, like German or French for readers of this text, it isn't easy.

This will cause problems.  For instance, you have a group like MEMRI, which takes inflammatory news and video clips from the Middle East and translates them into English.  Then you have a group that translates Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and other's most vitriolic statements into Arabic.  Both groups are leading us to war, whatever their intentions.  Both of these groups are taking the worst sh*t in each society and shoving it under the nose of the other.  The newspapers of the Kaiser and the Tsar did similar things before WWI, according to James Joll.  To incite a population into becoming worthy of death one must focus on the very worst of it, and ignore anything better. 

What's worse, I suppose, in a way, is that few if any Teutons learned what Slav-language newspapers were saying about them, and vice-versa. 

---

P.S. I don't actually know of any group translating American vileness into Arabic, Farsi or Pashto, but we do know that when Bush called his war a "crusade" that was repeated millions of times in the Middle East.  The ignorance and hate get translated.  There's no money in peace.