These organisations can be a real engine of growth for local economies, and can provide the perfect forum for sharing best practice and resources. So well done to our own local Chamber in the North of England on their excellent new web site  and we look forward to meeting new and existing members in the course of the coming year!

I love this job – but it can be hard to explain to others in social situations sometimes! Two recent illustrations: an acquaintance at an evening class, on hearing that we are a translation company, said “they all speak English on the continent don’t they!” Secondly pub landlord comedian Al Murray on hearing that a member of his audience was a Spanish translator quipped: “they all speak English, you’re surplus to requirements you are mate!!”

NO!  According to some latest figures, approx. 56% of the population of Germany can speak English to some degree as a second language – a Eurobaromoter survey from back in 1994 gave the figure as 35%, so maybe there is a trend there. In the Spain the recent figure is 27% and the 1994 figure is 13%. Whilst these figures are not particularly scientific, there may be a trend to more people speaking English as a second language - but clearly this ability does not extend to the majority of the population in many key European markets.

So the key questions for UK exporters are: do the people receiving my communications speak and read English, and then are they more likely to purchase from me if I communicate in the receiver’s language? The answer to the second question is very probably yes: people are more likely to buy in their own language.

The graph below is taken from Wikipedia, and shows the approximate percentage of the population that speak English as a second language in each country.

P.S. According to figures released recently by fellow ATC members LTC, the UK translation industry is now worth between €636 and €641 million. Also please see our own web site for some figures on how much business is done in different languages around the world.

TWB translates more than two million words per year for charities such as Médecins sans Frontières, Médecins du Monde, Action Against Hunger and Oxfam. The work of TWB is of crucial importance for the success of humanitarian work such as engineering and construction projects but it is particularly important in healthcare.

Donations can be made here.

The report contains much useful information and sound advice for UK exporting companies. According to a survey upon which the report is based, current barriers for non-exporters include a lack of contacts (43%), insufficient market information or intelligence (28%) and inadequate finance (33%). It is suggested that potential exporters could speak to the various UK business support organisations including UKTI to build contacts through support and, if appropriate, take part in trade missions.

HOWEVER…..language is only mentioned twice in an 18 page report – and in both cases language is mentioned as a problem, with no solutions offered. We suggest that language issues and communications should addressed as part of an export strategy – alongside other key challenges that need a strategy such as finance and marketing aspects.

Questions to form the basis of such a strategy might be:

- What language is spoken by the target audience for my product or service?

- By what means can we communicate our messages and in what form do we want to receive communication?

After identifying the language spoken by the target audience, solutions and strategies might include:

- Deciding what resources might we employ to facilitate the communication e.g. are we using or recruiting in-house skills or working with a language service provider? Or a mixture?

- Deciding to have a professional translation of a web site – or maybe initially just part of a web site – in the target language. Maybe this will include a tightly controlled response form that prospects can use to send a simple enquiry.

- Working closely with a native speaker to set up initial meetings by phone.

- Consider hiring an interpreter for initial meetings.

So we commend the Chamber report to you, and suggest that potential exporters should not be too daunted by language issues. There is plenty of help out there.

Mark (mrobinson@alexika.com)

First the fascinating part – and there is plenty of it. Prof. Pagel explains that as many as 500,000 languages have lived  and died since modern humans evolved. But they are dwindling all the the time, and half of today’s 6909 languages are under threat. We are living in an era of the least linguistic diversity, with only about 20 languages covering almost the entire population of the world. The remainder are spoken by tribal groups of usually only a few thousand.

Prof. Pagel explains that languages die out for political and geographical reasons: “Some languages just by accident get hooked up to successful societies and they drive those languages. Every language on earth is equally good at being a human language. There are just lucky ones. The luckiest of them all is English.” This research is fascinating and Prof. Pagel’s body of work can be accessed here.

No doubt the conclusion is simplified for the purposes of a newspaper article, but the argument is then taken to its conclusion as follows. English is everyone’s second language, so English will win this battle to the death. Just as many more languages have died out, so many more will follow until we are left with just one. But this is where we would beg to differ! On our own web site, we present the information that only 15 languages cover over 90% of the business done in the world. And yes, English covers 35% of business done globally. But look what’s coming – Chinese in 3rd place with only 7.4% – this is surely set to grow. German stubbornly in 4th with 7.2%, and showing no sign at all of losing impact.

We would humbly add another reason to Prof. Pagels list. Languages prosper or die out for political and geographical reaons – and also for reasons of international trade. Admittedly the British are not good at this, but generally people need to learn languages to sell things to each other across cultures – and they find that they can sell more if they use the language of their customers. To paraphrase Helmut Schmidt: If you buy from me I speak English, but if you are selling to me – Sprechen Sie Deutsch!!

University of Reading, Berkshire UK

The crib will be visible in our office window tonight, and we hope that passers-by might stop for a moment to enjoy them. We wish everyone a peaceful Advent time.

For the fourth year, Alexika Ltd has been reaccredited to the international Quality standard ISO9001 with zero non-conformities.

The assessment meeting was demanding as usual, but a positive challenge to check that our quality systems are robust. Our systems are well established but in any business there is room for continual improvement.

Well done to all the Alexika team. We are pleased to recommend the British Assessment Bureau for a thorough and positive ISO9001 experience.

We have also been largely paperless for several years now – all project management tasks are carried out through our bespoke electronic project system, client and supplier records are securely back-up in digital format, translator tools and resources are largely electronic and online…After keeping lots of paper history going back many years, we recently used the services of Shred-It to shred many archive boxes worth of paper in only a few minutes. I would recommend this process to any document-based business – we now have a functioning store room, and more space around the place for potted plants!

So hopefully the office is a healthier place all round!

My answer is that there are really 3 key factors at play here:

1. Supply – relative to demand. Some countries produce many qualified professional translators and many of these people do go on to join the profession. In larger developed countries such as UK, Germany and France there are many qualified translators competing for the work, and rates are under competitive pressure.  In smaller countries such as Finland, there are fewer translators from a smaller population, and less incentive for these fewer translators to specialise in one particular area e.g. engineering.

2. Demand – relative to the supply. Of course high demand for the translators leads to higher rates and vice versa, fairly straightforward for German, French, English – although it’s a more relative thing in translation e.g. the relatively few specialist professional translators in Finland can be in relatively high demand.  Complex because it is also driven by the demand for subject specialism e.g. engineering translation, legal translation.

3. Wage demands in different economies – When translating out of English, we always need to work with native speakers of the target language, usually based on their own country. In high wage economies such as Finland, they demand high rates of pay (otherwise they would do other work), in lower wage economies such as Turkey they demand lower wages. In some cases this affect outweighs supply/demand factors altogether – e.g. in India where very professional translators can work for lower wages.

So it’s basically down to the meeting of the classic demand and supply curves so loved by students of economics – P being price, Q being quantity:

But I’d welcome thoughts on this – do you see the balance differently? Which key forces should I also mention? In economics terms, a translation company is working with several related markets – but actually the forces working on the market for each language combination are different. Therefore rates for different language combinations – and subject specialism – do vary.

We sometimes hear the argument that “they all speak English anyway” i.e. we don’t need to translate our web site because overseas clients don’t need it. Well – an article about this research from the BBC explains how even in Sweden – where many people do speak English – over 80% of consumers have a preference for buying in their own language.

Even consumers who are fluent in English – or more commonly have a working knowledge of English – will only make a serious purchasing decision with confidence if they are reading their own language.

P.S. Please see previous post “No – they don’t all speak English” from November 2009 – we feel strongly that more UK companies in particular need to recognise this issue!