Beyond the theoretical linguistics search for language universals, there exist a number of practical linguistic problems concerning multilingual environments. This article discusses a number of related multilingual natural language processing (NLP) applications, many connected with using Internet language identification. Internet users want to shop, interact in virtual communities, and find information without language being a barrier, with as much ease as they can. This article presents a technical overview of the research and development being performed on four multilingual applications: language identification, terminology alignment, cross-language information retrieval, and comprehension aids. It covers a wide range of tools that allows the user to understand text written in another language, without using the machinery of full automatic translation.