What Can MT Do for Multilingualism on the Net?

The recent rapid spread of the Internet suggests that soon everybody on earth will be able to communicate freely with each other across national borders. The 21 century will be the age of multilingualism and multiculturalism, when various languages and cultures are dynamically exchanged on a global scale. One may call it the New Great Age of Translation. In such an age, Machine Translation (MT) is obviously expected to play an essential role. What kind of technological efforts, then, are required in the 21 century? A new type of MT product will be sought, which is different from the application products for traditional translation or real-time interpretation. This paper first clarifies the coming need, and introduces an interactive and evolutionary MT technology. Secondly, it addresses Han characters (Kanji) which have distinct origin and functions from alphabets. As highly developed visual symbols, Han characters are expected to promote Internet communication.