The Most Difficult Languages In Localisation
Jack Waley-Cohen asked:
All languages evolve against a backdrop of a country’s historical and technological advances and along the way, new words and usage become part of the vocabulary. These new words will generally fall into two categories; words that have evolved within their own cultural milieu and words that have been ‘borrowed’ from other languages.
For the most part, a vast number of the latter type of words refer to technological developments and it is usually the country that the development originated in, that lends its name for it to other countries.
This has in fact caused some problems in recent years; some years ago both France and Russia had a linguistic nationalist resurgence which led them to ban all foreign derived words from public signage and to replace them with newly created equivalent words.
For some countries, however, this would be impossible. Some countries have developed culturally, in a technologically underdeveloped historical milieu thus, there are simply not terms in existence to accurately convey the meaning of some modern technological expressions, much less replace them with newly derived ones.
These countries pose a real challenge to companies wishing to do business within them, as their languages constitute the most difficult to work with in localisation. An example of this and also what is considered to be the most difficult language to localise, is the Arabic language.
A major factor in this difficulty is that the Arab countries lack the widespread technology that is an everyday part of life in many countries worldwide. Because of this, the Arabic language lacks many of the linguistic developments to deal on a par with more technological languages. As an addendum, it is worth noting that the difficulty is also compounded by poor software support for the Arabic language.
Of the other languages that are the hardest to localise, the Finno-Ugric languages (the Finnish and Hungarian family, including Estonian) tend to be cited as ranking near the top of the league. Perhaps a clue as to why this is, can be illustrated in a converse example, the Latin based languages (French, Spanish, Italian). These languages are very similar and having mastered one of them, it is relatively easy to learn the others. The converse is true with the Finno-Ugric family…because they are so grammatically different from the Latin, or indeed, Germanic family of languages localisation is not an easy task. A further compounding factor is the relatively few people proficient in the language.
No discourse would be complete, however, without mentioning Chinese as a top ranker, along with Arabic, for the top position of most difficult language for localisation. The reasons most cited for this are that the Chinese language works totally differently to the linguistic rules that we are accustomed to; the script is also totally different, with each character being symbolic and not phonetic. Add to this mix, the technological difficulties in adapting the Chinese script to internet usage and the problems are greatly compounded.
Great efforts are constantly being made to conquer the hurdles in localising languages, in the final analysis; it is of immense benefit to ensure that this is done. A country will benefit culturally by gaining a linguistic equivalency and the world of commerce will benefit by the opening of new markets.
All languages evolve against a backdrop of a country’s historical and technological advances and along the way, new words and usage become part of the vocabulary. These new words will generally fall into two categories; words that have evolved within their own cultural milieu and words that have been ‘borrowed’ from other languages.
For the most part, a vast number of the latter type of words refer to technological developments and it is usually the country that the development originated in, that lends its name for it to other countries.
This has in fact caused some problems in recent years; some years ago both France and Russia had a linguistic nationalist resurgence which led them to ban all foreign derived words from public signage and to replace them with newly created equivalent words.
For some countries, however, this would be impossible. Some countries have developed culturally, in a technologically underdeveloped historical milieu thus, there are simply not terms in existence to accurately convey the meaning of some modern technological expressions, much less replace them with newly derived ones.
These countries pose a real challenge to companies wishing to do business within them, as their languages constitute the most difficult to work with in localisation. An example of this and also what is considered to be the most difficult language to localise, is the Arabic language.
A major factor in this difficulty is that the Arab countries lack the widespread technology that is an everyday part of life in many countries worldwide. Because of this, the Arabic language lacks many of the linguistic developments to deal on a par with more technological languages. As an addendum, it is worth noting that the difficulty is also compounded by poor software support for the Arabic language.
Of the other languages that are the hardest to localise, the Finno-Ugric languages (the Finnish and Hungarian family, including Estonian) tend to be cited as ranking near the top of the league. Perhaps a clue as to why this is, can be illustrated in a converse example, the Latin based languages (French, Spanish, Italian). These languages are very similar and having mastered one of them, it is relatively easy to learn the others. The converse is true with the Finno-Ugric family…because they are so grammatically different from the Latin, or indeed, Germanic family of languages localisation is not an easy task. A further compounding factor is the relatively few people proficient in the language.
No discourse would be complete, however, without mentioning Chinese as a top ranker, along with Arabic, for the top position of most difficult language for localisation. The reasons most cited for this are that the Chinese language works totally differently to the linguistic rules that we are accustomed to; the script is also totally different, with each character being symbolic and not phonetic. Add to this mix, the technological difficulties in adapting the Chinese script to internet usage and the problems are greatly compounded.
Great efforts are constantly being made to conquer the hurdles in localising languages, in the final analysis; it is of immense benefit to ensure that this is done. A country will benefit culturally by gaining a linguistic equivalency and the world of commerce will benefit by the opening of new markets.