Various media projected that “with the completion of the computer network, a global village will be born...” and there has been much talk of a rosy future. Yet, doesn't globalization constitute the universalization of American English? What will happen to minority language cultures? This forum considered the coming network society through an investigation of technological developments in mechanical translation. NAGAO Makoto, a pioneer in mechanical translation research, SAGISAKA Yoshinori, who is working on the development of voice translation, and SAKAMURA Ken, who has addressed the issue of international character sets, debated issues of computer language from the perspective of engineering.