Americas
The main languages spoken throughout the Americas, in addition to English, are Spanish, Canadian French and Portuguese.
Spanish (US & Latin America)
In the United States of America, Spanish is the second most common language after English, being spoken natively by about 30 million people 5 years and over (or 12% of the population) in 2005, excluding 4.0 million native speakers in Puerto Rico. Today Spanish is so widely spoken in the United States that it is generally considered to be either the third or the fourth largest Spanish-speaking country in the world (after Mexico, Colombia and possibly Spain). More »
French (Canada)
French is the official language of the Province of Quebec. It is substantially different in pronunciation and vocabulary, though easily mutually comprehensible, with modern day European French. More>>
Portuguese (Brazil)
Portuguese is the main language of Brazil (pop. 182 million). It is the only language with full official status in Brazil and there are little regional variances.
The language spoken in Brazil is quite different from the one spoken in Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries. Brazilian Portuguese is more archaic than European Portuguese and has some phonological and ortographical difference.
How do I get started?
To discuss your translation requirements for doing business in the Americas call us on 0508 443 613 or Email Us
Europe
There are 20 official languages in the European Union plus a further 12 for countries which can be considered to be in Europe but are not EU members.
Amongst these, frequently requested languages are German, French and Russian.
French
In 1999 French was the 11th most spoken language in the world, being spoken by about 77 million people (called francophones) as a mother tongue, and by 128 million total including second language speakers.
French is the official language of France an its overseas territories (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, French southern and Antarctic lands, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Mayotte.
The French language is a Romance language, meaning that it is descended from Latin. More>>
Russian
Russian (русский язык) is the most widely spoken language of Europe and the most widespread of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the group of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages, including English, French, and Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the USSR. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language, the unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian. Following the break-up of 1991, several of the newly independent states have encouraged their native languages, which has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian, though its role as the language of post-Soviet national intercourse throughout the region has continued.
Russian is written using a modern version of the Cyrillic (кириллица) alphabet, consisting of 33 letters. More>>
German
German is the language with the most native speakers in the European Union.
It is spoken primarily in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and in two-thirds of Switzerland.
German is the main language of about 100 million people in Europe (as of 2004), or 13.3% of all Europeans, being the most spoken language in Europe excluding Russia, above French (66.5 million speakers in Europe in 2004) and English (64.2 million speakers in Europe in 2004).
German is the third most taught foreign language worldwide, the second most taught in Europe and the third also in the USA. More>>
How do I get started?
To discuss your translation requirements for doing business in Europe call us on 0508 443 613 or Email Us
Asia-Pacific
Many languages are spoken throughout the Asia-Pacific region. For a
Frequently requested languages from this region are Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Chinese
When requesting translations into “Chinese”, there are two types of characters in use which should not be confused with “Mandarin” and “Cantonese”. The People’s Republic of China uses a simplified style of characters but those Chinese speaking countries and territories outside of the mainland have retained the un-simplified form, i.e. Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Mandarin Chinese or Putonghua is the official spoken language of the People’s Republic of China whereas Cantonese is a dialect used in Hong Kong and parts of Southern China, particularly Guangdong Province. More >>
Korean
The Korean language (한국어 / 조선어) is the most widely used language in Korea, and is the official language of both North and South Korea. The language is also spoken widely in neighbouring Yanbian, China. Worldwide, there are around 78 million Korean speakers, including large groups in the former Soviet Union, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and more recently the Philippines. More>>
Japanese
Though completely unrelated, Japanese has been heavily influenced by Chinese over a period of at least 1,500 years. It is written with a mix of borrowed Chinese characters (kanji) and a modified syllabary (kana), also originally based on Chinese characters with similar pronunciation. Scholarly and scientific vocabulary has been imported from Chinese, or created on Chinese models, in a way that is similar to the influence of Latin on European languages. Japanese also shares grammatical features with Chinese, such as the use of topic-comment constructions and classifiers, as do many other Eastern Asian languages. More>>
How do I get started?
To discuss your translation requirements for doing business in Asia-Pacific call us on 0508 443 613 or Email Us
Middle East/Africa
A wide variety of languages are spoken throughout Middle East/Africa.
Frequently requested languages for this region are Arabic & Hebrew.
Arabic
Arabic has its own alphabet, which is composed of 28 consonants. Most of the characters have four different forms, one for beginning a word, another for ending a word, still another for a medial position, and a fourth for a letter used by itself. Vowels are shown by symbols above or below the consonants, but they are optional and are often not written. The direction of writing is from right to left. More>>
Hebrew
Hebrew is the official language of Israel.
Modern Hebrew is written from right to left using the Hebrew alphabet. Modern scripts are based on the "square" letter form. A similar system is used in handwriting, but the letters tend to be more circular in their character, and sometimes vary markedly from their printed equivalents. Most modern Hebrew texts contain only consonants, spaces and western-style punctuation.
How do I get started?
To discuss your translation requirements for doing business in Middle East/Africa call us on 0508 443 613 or Email Us
