It's Sept. 5, and you decide that you want to find out more about the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). You turn on the computer, connect to the Internet and go to the MDA Web site. Clicking on a link, you are suddenly confronted with the sight and sound of Jerry Lewis speaking Japanese.

Don't fear for your sanity. You've just stumbled across the 1999 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, which is being streamed live across the Internet this Labor Day weekend. In addition to the live English-speaking event, the inaugural Webcast will be translated into Spanish and Japanese to make the show more accessible to the world.

RealNetworks will partner with MDA to bring live audio and video to computer users worldwide through streaming media technology. This technology makes continual programming feasible because it plays audio and video on the computer screen while it downloads over the Internet, as opposed to other formats where the computer must first download an entire file.

Translations will be done by CyraCom International. MDA estimates the multilingual programming will be accessible to over two billion people that speak English, Spanish and/or Japanese.

The Webcast will begin on Sept. 5 at 9 PM EDT through the MDA Web site. In order to see it, Internet users need to download RealNetworks' free RealPlayer software, which will play the RealAudio- and RealVideo-encoded media streams.

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