The pre-recorded version of OBDILCI’s presentation at the 7th European Conference on Multilingualism, May 22th 2026, in the session “Multilingualism and Societal and Cultural Challenges” – TB 10 – Multilingualism, a major issue for the Internet and AI, on the theme “Languages ​​and Multilingualism on the Internet: State of the Art and Perspectives” – VIDEO (in French, 20mn)

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Every thing you would like to know about the new OBDILCI program MECILDI to measure languages and multilingualism in any series of web site and its first outcomes is now documented in the following preprint in ResearchGate: MECILDI: computing languages and multilingualism indicators of any series of web sites with due attention to web multilingualism – Application on TRANCO and comparation with W3Techs, Daniel Pimienta and Mike Field, March 2026

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Study on multilingualism of gTLDs of France

As second part of the project funded by DGLFLF, MECILDI was applied in the following geographic/linguistic gTLDs with the goal to collect indicators of multilingualism and language’s proportion:  .alsace, .bzh (Bretagne), .corsica, .eus (basque), .gp (Guadeloupe), .nc (Nouvelle Calédonie) and also .quebec and .paris.

Some 20 different indicators were collected such as percentage of multilingual web, rate of multilingualism, average number of languages per multilingual site, percentage of IDN use, different types of errors, etc.

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The linguistic digital divide

The French-language Canadian journal Minorités linguistiques et société publishes in its Issue 23, 2024, dedicated to “Digital Technology and Linguistic Communities in Minority Settings: Roles, Impacts, and Challenges,” an open-access article by Virginie Hébert and Maria Bodron titled “The Linguistic Digital Divide: A Framing Analysis of the Literature on Language Inequalities in the Digital Environment.” Link: https://doi.org/10.7202/1124262ar

This article is interesting for several reasons:

• To our knowledge, this is the first time that a systematic effort to research, compile, and analyze has been undertaken at the intersection of the digital divide and linguistic diversity. The dominant view of the digital divide—one that is entirely technology-focused and obsessed with access—has historically overshadowed fundamental issues such as digital literacy and linguistic diversity.
• For their systematic review, the authors cross-referenced three categories, each comprising about ten terms, synonyms for divide, or for digital or linguistic, and focused their search for sources on both academic literature and gray literature (which we consider very wise for a topic where civil society has been highly active in the field of action research, and often ahead of the academic world). They systematized their search, covering the period 1995–2024, using the databases Érudit, CAIRN, ERIC, HAL, Scopus, and Google Scholar, then supplemented this with manual searches within international organizations competent in these areas (such as UNESCO), and subsequently used the bibliographies of the identified sources to systematically expand the number of sources to be analyzed.
• The methodological approach was followed by a method known as frameworking, which thus employs another form of systematization, this time focused on content analysis.
• Last but not least, the result of such a thorough examination of all the concepts underlying the “linguistic digital divide” could have turned out to be unappealing, hard to digest, or even unpalatable—but none of that is the case! The result is a very enjoyable read, as well as an enriching one, connecting and fostering dialogue between sources that might otherwise remain unaware of one another, as bridges between gray literature and academic scholarship are rare.

In short, this is a reference work.

This is an area where AI is making a major impact, which should encourage the authors to update the text in a few years—or sooner—to focus on the effects of AI on the subject.

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MECILDI V1 FIRST RUN ON TRANCO SERIES

April 2026: This is an historical moment for whoever is interested in languages@internet. For the first time, a language detection program is designed with due consideration to web multilingualism, correcting the strong bias of previous methods favoring English.

Here are  the first  results of MECILDI version 1, applied to the Tranco sampling of one million  web sites the most visited.

Guess what? All of our main documented predictions are confirmed!

The percentage of web pages in English in TRANCO series is 22%

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Human Resilience for the AI Age

An essay, co-written with Luis Germán Rodríguez Leal, is published in the last production of the always impacting and stimulating Elon University’ Imagining the Digital Future Center :  “Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the AI Age”.

This essay focuses the urgency and importance of pervasive and comprehensive Digital and Information Literacy, as a necessary strategy to face AI challenges and draws 3 possible future scenarios, Utopia, Status Quo or Dystopia.

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Le français dans le monde

Publication by OIF/Gallimard of the report about French language in the world in which we have contributed to the chapter about languages in the Internet, pp 187-193.

The full report in French is accessible here (42MB).

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A new section have been added under the title MAIN PROJECT 2: MECILDI. MECILDI stands for targeted measurement of languages in the Internet from its French initials.

It is a new and ambitious project based on the creation of a program in capacity to extract language repartition and multilingualism parameters from any series of web sites, that with due consideration of the fact that a web site can have more than one language.

This consideration of web multilingualism in the process is both a complex problem and a historical breakthrough. It will allow, when applied to TRANCO, the series of the one million most visited web sites, to correct the extremely biased figures from W3Techs (see this article) and offer the first ever bias corrected measurement of language repartition in the webpages of the most visited sites.

The version 1 of MECILDI is the final testing process and soon we will share results, stay tuned!

This project first version has been funded by la délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France of France Ministry of Culture and will be next applied to obtain multillingualism characteristics and language percentages split for a series of gTLDs of languages of France (.alsace, .bzh, .corsica, .gp, .mq, .yt, .nc, .eus, .pf and .wf).

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From Babel to AI

Daniel Pimienta, on behalf of OBDILCI, said he was very honored to have been invited to address the issue of linguistic diversity on the Internet (English version) in the second edition of the reference work (in French).

« De Babel à l’intelligence artificielle – Le plurilinguisme de Dante à nos jours »

Christian Tremblay, José Carlos Herreras (coord.). Collection plurilinguisme, édité par l’Observatoire européen du plurilinguisme. ISBN : 9791042488130 – 1/2026.

Website to purchase the book:

Presentation of the book with a list of topics covered:

I am sharing this ten-page excerpt and invite you to purchase the complete work via the link above. This book, which covers a wide range of topics related to multilingualism, brings together original texts by:

Jean-Claude Beacco, Professeur des universités émérite, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

Christos Clairis, Professeur des universités émérite, Université Paris Cité

Jean-Marc Delagneau, Maitre de Conférences honoraire, Université du Havre

Pierre Frath, Professeur des universités émérite, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne.

Astrid Guillaume, Maitre de conférences HDR à Sorbonne Université

José Carlos Herreras, Professeur des universités émérite, Université Paris Cite

Isabelle Mordellet-Roggenbuck, Professeur des universités émérite, Université de Fribourg

Daniel Pimienta, docteur en informatique, président de l’Observatoire de la diversité linguistique et culturelle dans l’Internet

François Rastier, Directeur de recherche émérite, CNRS

Christian Tremblay, docteur en sciences de l’information, ancien élève de l’ENA

And, with the permission of the relevant publishers, reproduces texts or excerpts from texts from:

Olga Anokhina, chargée de recherche CNRS-ENS

Hannah Arendt, philosophe

Louis-Jean Calvet†, Professeur des universités émérite, Université d’Aix-en-Provence

Ernst Cassirer, philosophe

Barbara Cassin, membre de l’Académie française, Directrice de recherche émérite CNRS

Véronique Castelloti, Professeur des universités émérite, Université François Rabelais, Tours

Daniel Coste, Professeur des universités émérite, ENS de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud, Directeur du CREDIF et Université de Genève

Dante Alighieri, poète

Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Professeur à l’Université Columbia de New York

Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, Professeur des universités à Sorbonne Université

Claude Hagège, Directeur de recherche émérite CNRS, Professeur au Collège de France

Werner Heisenberg, physicien

Wilhelm von Humboldt, naturaliste

Pierre Judet de La Combe, Directeur d’études EHESS

Samia Kassab-Charfi, Professeur des universités, Université de Tunis

Laurent Lafforgue, Directeur de recherche CNRS, Médaille Fields

Jack Lang, Ancien ministre

G. W. Leibniz, philosophe

Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond, Professeur des universités émérite

Tullio de Mauro, linguiste

Henri Meschonnic†, professeur à l’université Paris 8

Danièle Moore, Professeure distinguée en éducation de l’Université Simon Fraser, et DILTEC, Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3

Paul Ricoeur, philosophe

Claude Sicre, président du Carrefour culturel Arnaud-Bernard

Ferdinand de Saussure, linguiste

Ndiémé Sow, Professeur, Université de Dakar

George Steiner, linguiste

Giambattista Vico, philosophe

Lev Vygotski, philosophe

Cédric Villani, Professeur des universités, Université Claude-Bernard-Lyon I, Médaille Fields

Heinz Wismann, Directeur d’études émérite à l’EHESS

Dominique Wolton, Directeur de recherche émérite CNRS

Geneviève Zarate, Professeur des universités émérite, Inalco

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https://grokipedia.com/page/funredes

The Grokipedia article on Funredes (Network and Development Foundation), built on Grok exploration of multiple sources, 80 % being Funredes own web archives and publications, is really impressive in terms of digesting and reorganizing a large amount of information and giving respective priorities between a large set of elements. Hereafter, we share some comments which could correct, precise and enhance this large and complex narrative about the endeavor of an NGO lasting almost 30 years and prolongated by a new NGO, since 2017, the Observatory of linguistic and Cultural Diversity on the Internet (OBDILCI), which activities are also evocated in this Grokipedia entry.

This article created by Grok IA does not show hallucinations, only one error in attributing elements from Pimienta’s activities during his IBM career to Funredes  (“including early work on OSI protocol compliance and voice/data integration systems” in “Achievements and contributions” section). Grokipedia has the fame to be biased towards extreme right political vision; in that specific case no political bias appears, not even on the “Criticisms and limitations” section that we avoid to comment in order to remain neutral.

The introduction is excellent by its summarizing capacity, except that the CARDICIS project, the fourth more important project after REDALC, MISTICA and OBDILCI, should be more emphasized than CARDICIS3, the coining of the influential and most cited concept of “paradigmatic divide” should be highlighted, as well as the pioneer and early effort conducted to experiment with automatic translation in discussion lists. Finally, the transversal and very early workshop dense activities of Funredes on digital  and information literacy are a signature of its more impactful contribution.

• CARDICIS was a project dedicated to the Caribbean to sensitize civil society on the importance of considering linguistic diversity in the co-building of a regional information society and it was concreted in 2 workshops gathering a representative sampling of Caribbean civil society players, in Santa Lucia (8/2004) and Juan Dolio (Dominican Republic, in 12/2005). The website (https://funredes.org/cardicis) holds all the relevant information including notable outcomes which could still today orient public policies in the subregion.

• The article coining the concept of paradigmatic divide has been cited 217 times in its Spanish version, 29, in the English version and 9 in the French version; however, the concept has been retaken hundreds of times without article citations, and have deeply fed some very influential publications:
  • as, for example, in French, “Rapport de la mission parlementaire de Jean-Michel Fourgous, député des Yvelines, sur la modernisation de l’école par le numérique : “Réussir l’école numérique », 15 février 2010 – https://www.vie-publique.fr/files/rapport/pdf/104000080.pdf
• • in English, in “ICTs and Development, What is Missing?”, Sascha Rosenberger, IEE Working paper, Vol 203, Bochum 2014. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/183557/1/wp-203.pdf
  • in Spanish, it has served as material for several thesis and Master studies.

• Also, the pioneer and extended efforts of Funredes of experimenting with early use of automatic translation imbedded in discussion list should have deserved more attention;
• Funredes has educated hundreds of internauts thru early and numerous digital and information literacy workshops, in different venues, contexts, languages and formats and helped transform them into netizen aware of the stakes behind being an internaut. This could be its most impactful action and its concrete contribution to information ethics.
• the same for the most recent researches from OBDILCI on web multilingualism (https://obdilci.org/projects/other/mlreports/) and on the relationship of translation and AI (https://obdilci.org/projects/other/ai ). However, those could be input for a future article on OBDILCI.

The Grokipedia article does provide a deep, large and fair description of the main activities and products of Funredes’s life. It could have however beneficiated from listing (and exploring for some of them) some additional key publications belonging to Funredes.

In the Network Building and Virtual Communities section, it would be fair to mention, at the side of UTOPISTA, three additional documents reflecting, each one in a different manner, the richness of the collective effort proper of the MISTICA virtual community:

• “Working the Internet with a Social Vision”, the result of the collective thinking and writing of the MISTICA virtual community; a gathering of reflections made in 2007 about the Internet which is still, 20 years later, extremely valid and actual. There is a text version and also a graphic version nicely illustrated, all in 4 languages accessible from https://funredes.org/mistica/english/cyberlibrary/thematic/
• “At the Boundaries of Ethics and Cultures : Virtual Communities as an Open Ended Process Carrying the Will for Social Change (the “MISTICA” experience)” – https://funredes.org/mistica/english/cyberlibrary/thematic/icie/ This published article from Daniel Pimienta focused the complex of methodologies put in experiment thru the MISTICA project and the philosophy behind.
• “Other side of the divide. Latin-American and Caribbean Perspectives on the WSIS”, this document, coordinated by Luis German Rodriguez, is a compound of various contributions from MISTICA most active players which would serve as input to the WSIS process. It is accessible at https://funredes.org/redistic/index.htm?body=proyectosjen, again in 4 languages.

Those 3 documents, together with UTOPISTA, could represent the most elaborated heritage from the MISTICA experience, which transcend the elapsed time and offer knowledge perfectly meaningful to contemporary reflections.

Additionally, the following publications could have been explored and mentioned to complete the article, although some are not in English:

– “Parte de la prehistoria de la Internet en América latina y el Caribe: la experiencia de la Fundación Redes y Desarrollo, FUNREDES, en su periodo inicial 1988-1995”, Proc. of IV Simposio de Historia de la Informática de América Latina y el Caribe (SHIALC), 2016, –https://is.cos.ufrj.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/ProceedingsSHIALC2016v5Dic.pdf#page=78. This article offers a description of Funredes’s activities between its origin, as a department of Union Latine, its birth in 1993 and 1995.

– “Rock the Internet Blues A critical view of the evolution of the Internet” – https://funredes.org/RockInternetBlues (in 3 languages), 2020. This article written by Pimienta and Rodriguez collect the vision from 2012 to 2020 of how Google decision of making advertisement the business case in the Internet has ruined the utopian promises of the Internet.

– “Una historia breve de la observación de las lenguas en la Internet”, en Proc. del VII Simposio de Historia de la Informática (SHIALC), pp294-312, Univ. de São Paulo, ISBN 978-65-981536-3-2 – 8/2022 – https://is.cos.ufrj.br/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ebook-shialc-2022-final-compactado.pdf.pdf#page=294  This article which also exists in French, focus specifically the history of linguistic diversity in the Internet, a theme where Funredes and its son OBDILCI have been major players.

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