Languages on the Internet Changing with the Times

With more people than ever before accessing the internet, the languages we see used on websites are starting to change. According to the organization Internet World Stats, the three languages most commonly found on the internet today are English, with 495.8 million users, Chinese, with 407.7 million users, and Spanish with 139.8 million users. Other languages in the top ten, from number four to ten, include Japanese, Portuguese, German, Arabic, French, Russian and Korean.

As some languages become more dominant and others lose ground, it’s likely that we will see some changes in this list in the future. How will the ranking of important languages on the web change – and what will these changes mean for internet users down the road?

Changing Status of Different Internet Languages

Although it’s difficult to pinpoint just which languages will reign supreme in the future, there are some trends that can help predict basic changes. English and Spanish are among the fastest-growing languages world-wide, for instance, while new educational measures in the US are boosting knowledge of languages like Arabic and Chinese.

It’s also important to note the changing status of languages based on geography. For instance, Spanish is increasingly important in the United States. This is due not only to increased numbers of Spanish-speaking immigrants over the past decades but also to more ready American acknowledgement of the Spanish language’s significance within the country. As a result, many websites of US-based companies and even government services are now available in Spanish as well.

Increased Translation of Languages on the Internet

What sets the internet apart from any other type of media is that it serves as a global forum allowing people all over the world to contribute. As internet technology becomes more widespread and a greater number people have access to the internet, more and more websites will seek to reach out to this increasingly varied pool of people.

Although website language translation will likely continue to focus on major linguistic target groups, like Spanish and English, odds are that the web will be translated into a greater variety of languages as well. As a result, internet language translation will not only become more common, it will become more diverse. It may well be that the standard website of the future will offer translation into five languages or more.

Consequences of Changes in Web Languages

The future changes in languages used on the internet will permit a wider group of people than ever before to participate more easily in the online world. One danger of increased interest in web translation is that website owners, thinking that internet language is generally not formal or complicated, will turn to automated computer translations for their websites. Although it’s true that website language translation is less complicated than something like a legal or medical document, using automated translation is still a huge mistake.

Not only is automated translation largely unable to capture linguistic nuances, like idioms, it almost always results in confusing or downright unintelligible translation errors – even for the simplest phrases. Future translation of languages on the web offers the wonderful possibility of opening the internet up to a greater number of people than ever before, but it won’t make a difference if the translations are impossible to understand.