Iceland fears life without own Windows Language: Microsoft refuses to translate its computer program into Icelandic, raising the specter of corruption for a tongue that has remained pure for hundreds of years.

Iceland can't avoid computers; on the contrary, because it is in the middle of the North Atlantic, far from any continent, it needs e-mail and the Internet just to function in modern times. Iceland has promoted a computer-literate society, starting children early PCs in its schools. Already, it boasts the world's 17th highest rate of Internet usage.

"It's a very big danger," says Arnason, "because schoolchildren need computers, and the language of computers soon becomes the language of the kitchen."

A few years back, Apple spotted a business opportunity in Iceland's fear of electronic English infiltration. It translated its software into Icelandic and mounted a marketing campaign on the theme of minority-language protection.

Kristinsson has one of Apple's promotional posters on his office wall. It features a list of bastard words that an Icelandic kid might pick up through English-language Windows, with the legend, "What kind of child do you want to have?"

Kristinsson heartily approves -- but the Microsoft systems are overwhelmingly used in Iceland.

Unable to stop the influx of Windows, Iceland's cultural authorities began petitioning software importers, asking for the right to translate Windows into Icelandic. That proposal went nowhere, Arnason says, because the programs can't be translated without the translator's going into the main operating system, something Microsoft won't allow.

Iceland then offered to pay Microsoft to do the translation itself, but Microsoft refused to quote Iceland a price.

"The Microsoft people say we have to do it, but we're not allowed to do it," Arnason says. "It's a -- a what do you call it? -- a Catch-22."

Last fall, Iceland's minister of culture bypassed the importers and wrote directly to the Redmond, Wash., headquarters of Microsoft, warning that if a translation wasn't forthcoming, this country would find other ways to computerize its schools.

That at least elicited a letter, saying that Microsoft wouldn't translate Windows 95, but it might translate Windows 98. Since then, nothing.

So now Iceland is bringing in the heavy artillery: President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson himself is about to join the campaign.

Pub Date: 7/04/98