The study on the impact of the promulgation of English language as Thai’s second language Virach Sornlertlamvanich Director Information Research and Development.

The study on the impact of the promulgation of English

language as Thai’s second language

Virach SornlertlamvanichDirector

Information Research and Development Division (iTech) National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC)

- e mail: [email protected] http://www.links.nectec.or.th/virach

- 1 2000Dec , Multi lingual Archival Site, Keio Univ., Tokyo, Japan.

1. The definition of second language

Use in government affair. For example, every government document paper will provide both first and second language.

2. Why the English language?Information access: major language on the INTERNET

Economy: major language use in E-BUSINESS

3. The English language readiness

– English language school• Bangkok 227 schools (ป30k prs/school)• Provinces 129 schools (ป500k prs/school)

– The sample of various groups of Thai population who use English language in their every day life

context.• The importer who registered with Department of Expo

rt Promotion: 10,642• People in academic field: ?

- Source: Office of the Private Education Commissio n

http://www.depthai.go.th/ http://cyberatlas.internet.com/

• The Internet user: 1 .3 million

The language proficiency of the Internet user (2,404)

12.85%

0.42%

33.4%

53.33%

Fluent: in both readingand speaking

Fairly good: Capableof understanding textalthough not fluent inspeakingLittle: Able tounderstand just somepart of the context

None

Source:- Internet user profile of Thailand. National Electronics and Computer Technology Center. 1999

66.18% are fine in using English

The education level of the Internet user (2,404)

2.640.46

4.461.841.731.533.18

6.6

62.9770.86

0.550.69

21.8417.25

2.640.77

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80%

Enrolled

Graduated

Source:- Internet user profile of Thailand. National Electronics and Computer Technology Center. 1999

60% hold bachelor degree

0.00%

5.00%

10.00%

15.00%

20.00%

25.00%

30.00%

35.00%

40.00%

45.00%

The population’s working status report

Source:- National Statistics Office. The population’s working status report Phase1. February 2000

ป

Language Speaker (millions)

English 189.6

Total non-English 192.4

European Languages 113.8

Asian Languages 78.6

Chinese 28.7

J apanese 27.3

German 23.4

Spanish 18.9

Korean 15.7

French 15.2

I talian 12.3

Portuguese 9.4

Dutch 6

Thai 1.3

Language on the Web

Source:- http://www.glreach.com/

Language population on the Internet(Sept. 2000)

Thai l anguage web pages 2064, 000096

214250996English language web pages , ,

Thai language VS English langua ge web pages

Source:- http://www.siamguru.com/

http://cyberatlas.internet.com/

1,056

133

1,931

Web siteswithout ECactivities

Web siteserror

Web sites withEC activities

The number of e-commerce web sites in Thailand

- - Source: The conference documentary “Thai land e commerce polic y

frame work”. National Electronics and Computer Technology Center. 1999

EC ready 0.05%?!?!

ParSit Web Access - (July 11 November 10 200,

0

266,224 visits (total)2,256 visits/day (average)221,579 pages (total)2,877 pages/day (average)Average transaction time: 18.84 sec/page89.20% success in services

- ParSit is an English Thai cross lingual web navigationhttp://www.links.nectec.or.th/services/parsithttp://come.to/parsit

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

12 20 28 5 13 21 29 6 14 22 30 8 16 24 1 9

Transaction

no. of request no. of successf ul translation

J UL AUG SEP OCT NOV

Statistic of ParSit transactions(July 12, 2000 – Nov 13, 2000)

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

4500

26 4 12 20 28 5 13 21 29 6 14 22 30 8 16 24 1 9J UN J UL AUG SEP OCT NOV

Visit

Visitors of ParSit(June 26, 2000 – Nov 13, 2000)

The growth ofnon-English language on the Internet

Source:- http://www.glreach.com/

3 months later...

4. Discussion

• The Internet converges the languages on English while the language processing technology diversif

i es thel anguages.

• Supporting Technology– Machine Translation– - Cross Language Information Retrieval/Extraction– Datamining– Speech Technology …

are the key technologies for i nf or mat i on ni che.

Current status:-

4. Discussion

• Cross-language R&D collaboration (IT infrastructure)

– Asian languages core center as a language gateway– Digital contents archiving center as a cultural, historical, language, knowledge resource provider

• Asian E-Business, lifestyle• Security

Future knowledge-based society:-