The section “Foreign Languages for Travelers” gave links to online tools to learn 60 languages. The section “Translating Dictionaries” gave access to free basic online dictionaries in a number of languages (Afrikaans, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish). Other sections offered links to translation services, language schools and multilingual bookstores. People could also book their hotel, car or plane ticket, look up exchange rates and browse an index of 7,000 links to other language and travel sites.
Michael C. Martin wrote in August 1998: "I think the web is an ideal place to bring different cultures and people together, and that includes being multilingual. Our Travlang site is so popular because of this, and people desire to feel in touch with other parts of the world. (...) The internet is really a great tool for communicating with people you wouldn't have the opportunity to interact with otherwise. I truly enjoy the global collaboration that has made our Foreign Languages for Travelers pages possible."
What about the future? "I think computerized full-text translations will become more common, enabling a lot of basic communications with even more people. This will also help bring the internet more completely to the non-English speaking world."
Michael C. Martin sold Travlang to GourmetMarket.com in February 1999. GourmetMarket.com sold it to iiGroup in January 2000. By July 2000, the site was pulling in two million visitors a month.
[Summary] Tyler Chambers first created the Human-Languages Page (H-LP) in May 1994 as an index of language-related internet resources in a number of languages. In 1995, Tyler launched a second project, the Internet Dictionary Project (IDP), as a collaborative project to create free online dictionaries from English to other languages (French, German, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish). As explained in 1998 on the project's website: "The Internet Dictionary Project's goal is to create royalty-free translating dictionaries through the help of the internet's citizens. This site allows individuals from all over the world to visit and assist in the translation of English words into other languages. The resulting lists of English words and their translated counterparts are then made available through this site to anyone, with no restrictions on their use."