The medium for intercultural communication and exchange of information that has brought a new age in companies’ internal and external communication is the Internet. By integrating those communication means that have fully or partly substituted the old media types, the WWW has brought new dimensions and has opened new horizons for business communication in an intercultural environment. The questions that language policies applied by companies to intercultural communication on the web can pose are: which languages are used in the communication with domestic and international customers? In what ways are they treated? How does English co-exist with other languages? How do websites realize multilingualism? The examples that will be presented include some railway companies whose business opportunities were enhanced with the advent of the WWW and they gained some advantages over their competitors. For instance a German Translator once noticed that one railway company offered information on their services to their domestic customers only in German but at the same time, this company offered the same customers information in English on its website.
The last decade of the 20th century brought significant changes in the development of the Internet and the WWW, which commercialized substantially, and though today every company relies on its website for doing business, back then there was a great doze of hesitation about whether it should be invested in them or not. Furthermore, the principle of electronic commerce comprises all sorts of business transactions and communication including customer service functions, sales, marketing, PR, advertising. Websites are combinations of several business text genres such as brochures, advertisements, catalogues, manuals, reports, etc. Others would include slide shows, video, animation, audio presentations, etc. What nowadays is in most respects impeded by language seems to be information and communication, we cannot but agree. Luckily, the Web has pulled down almost all the barriers to communication and trade, but ironically, a website that is accessible throughout the world is not understandable to all of its audiences, and the main reason for this is language. One should first decide on the target audience if he/she is to select the most appropriate language a website will be in. So, if the main language of a website is Portuguese, the target audience will be Portuguese speakers in the first place. Translating the website into English by a Portuguese to English Translator can gain it much wider audience.
Today most barriers have been removed and websites can be produced in languages that do not even contain Latin characters, though initially the technical problems that existed before other languages were more. As the WWW had to have the capacity to serve the whole global community by meeting the demands and expectations of contemporary research, interpersonal communication and business, an organization was founded in 1994, which should provide the necessary technical equipment in order to make this possible. Those languages that used writing systems different from English were provided with new and different kinds of coded characters. The new solutions that the WWW has brought to intercultural business communication are connected with the further dimensions given by the possibility to add video and sound. The cultural characteristics that used to accompany the development of software dropped out, so different cultures could set their own parameters. Thus, software parameters that could be valid to France could be translated by a French Translator using the French conventions, so selecting English as the only language of the Web site was not the only means of targeting international audience.