Making the foreign language internet pay

This post is from guest blogger Nora Zavalczki of Lingo24.com

English is the lingua franca of the global age. It is the dominant language of mass culture, in particular of mainstream cinema and the internet. Around the world, it is spoken by between 300 and 400 million people as a first language; and by anywhere between 400 and 1,000 million people as a second language. This means that up to 20% of the world’s population speak English to some degree. This figure is increased in Europe, where 51% of EU citizens speak English as their first or second language.

These figures have a clear converse: 49% of EU citizens do not speak English and at least 80% of the world’s population has no working knowledge of the language. Other figures make clear that the position of English as the lingua franca of the global age is not as certain as it may seem. There are more native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and, according to how the figures are calculated, Spanish, Hindi, Urdu and Arabic than there are of English. 18% of EU citizens speak German as their first language, 5% more than the number of English native speakers. Another European language, Portuguese, is spoken worldwide by around 200 million people. It is significant that Hindu, Urdu, and Portuguese are spoken in the world’s two biggest growing economies, India and Brazil.

The nature of the global dominance of English is further upset when one considers that English as spoken around the world is different from the English spoken by native speakers, which is often overlooked by businesses when working abroad.

These differences often lead to confusion between native and non-native speakers - of whom there are far more - which can make business hard to conduct. Colloquial, everyday language is much more difficult for non-native speakers to understand than formal language with which a native speaker may not be comfortable.

For instance, native speakers are much more likely to use phrasal verbs - to get up, to build up, to get going - when a Latin-based verb such as to establish would be more easily understood by a non-native speaker. Such confusion can lead to a loss of business.

It is clear, therefore, that it is to the benefit of an international business to be able to conduct dealings in a variety of languages. Doing so gives a business a foothold in markets denied to a business insistent on using English.

When using traditional forms of advertising in a foreign market, such as in a newspaper or on a billboard, no business would consider doing so in anything other than the local language. The same applies to the many forms of internet advertising.

For example, a business should have versions of its website available in the languages of all the markets it is targeting. Any customer visiting the site is likely to prefer it to a site presented in the alien language of English - customers are four times more likely to buy from a site written in their own language. Being able to communicate with clients in their native language, for instance by email or over Skype, also makes business swifter and therefore cheaper to conduct.

Many of the languages which are spoken as much as, if not more than, English are used in the world’s biggest developing economies: Brazil (and other South American countries able to follow Brazil’s lead), Russia India, and China (BRIC). A company cannot expect to break into these markets using English alone. The most straightforward route into these markets in the twenty-first century is through the internet. Doing so in the country’s native language(s) will bring far greater financial benefits than the use of English alone would do.

About Lingo24
Lingo24 is a global translation services provider that also specializes in website localization. It has over 100 employees based in the UK, Panama, Romania, China and New Zealand, and a network of 4,000 translators. Its projected turnover for 2009 is $6.2m.