The Top 10 Languages on The Internet
As we move from one decade to the next, it’s always a time of reflection. In the last 10 years the way people use the internet around the world has changed so much. Key elements to this are accessibility and language. If you are looking at internationalising your website / ecommerce site, what languages will cover the most ground when applying translations? internetworldstats.com has pulled together research and statistics from multiple sources to produce a list of the top 10 languages ‘spoken’ on the web. Most of them are definitely what you’d expect, but some may surprise you! Below is an extract of their research - internet penetration is the ratio between the sum of internet users speaking a language and the total population estimate that speaks that specific language.
We’ve added our notes to each one.
English - 1,105,919,154 internet users (74.5% penetration).
Localisation of terms is usually still required with English usage across the globe, e.g. EN-GB to EN-US.
Chinese - 863,230,794 internet users (59.2% penetration).
Forms: predominantly Mandarin (written style is referred to as ‘Simplified Chinese’) and Cantonese (written style is referred to as ‘Traditional Chinese’).
Predominantly used natively in mainland China, Hong Kong (Hong Kong Style), Malaysia, Macau, Taiwan (Taiwan Style) and Singapore.
Spanish - 520,777,464 internet users (66.1% penetration).
Spanish is the official or co-language of the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela and Spain.
Although we very much appreciate that it’s easy to ask us for ‘Latin American Spanish’ translation or ‘South American Spanish’ translation, there isn’t really just one form for the whole continent - the differences to standard Spanish differ country to country. An example of this is the word ‘straw’ (a drinking straw). In Spanish it’s pajita, but it has a different word in nearly every South American country!
In Cuba it’s absorbente (relating to absorbent), bombilla in Bolivia and Chile (which confusingly is related to bulb / light), calimete in the Dominican Republic, cañita in Peru (little cane), carrizo in Panama (reed), pajilla in Costa Rica and Guatemala, pajita in Argentina (the same as in Spain), pitillo in Colombia and Venezuela (related to cigarette), popote in Mexico, sorbete in Argentina and Ecuador (also used for sorbet) and sorbeto in Puerto Rico!
If you want to sell recyclable straws in all of these countries, you’d better be sure that you’re not using just one ‘South American Spanish’ term, or your SEO will fail and you simply won’t get your customers on board.
Arabic - 444,016,517 internet users (51% penetration).
There are 25 countries / territories that claim Arabic as an official or co-official language: Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Although dialects may differ between countries, it is widely acknowledged that MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) is the literary standard and is one of the 6 official languages of the United Nations. Although it is a ‘formal’ style, it ensures that Arabic speakers using different verbal dialects can understand. Therefore if you are translating ‘once’ into Arabic (i.e., not having different translations for each Arabic-speaking country), you should be utilising this form.
Portuguese - 171,583,004 internet speakers (59.2% penetration).
Portuguese is an official language in ten countries, including Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Portugal, Guinea-Bissau, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Macau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe.
The most common forms used in business translation are Portuguese for Portugal and Portuguese for Brazil - which do have some differences.
Indonesian / Malaysian - 169,685,798 internet users (56.1% penetration).
Malaysian and Indonesian are two standardised registers of the Malay language, used in Malaysia and Indonesia, respectively. Both varieties are generally mutually intelligible, yet there are noticeable differences in spelling, grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary, as well as the predominant source of loanwords.
French - 144,695,288 internet users (34.3% penetration).
French is the native language or regularly in use in:
Europe; France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Monaco, Switzerland.
Africa; Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, Réunion, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Togo, Tunisia.
Americas and the Caribbean; Canada, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique.
Australia and the Pacifics; French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Vanuatu.
Japanese - 118,626,672 internet users (93.5% penetration).
Considering that Japanese is only spoken as an official language in one country - Japan - this statistic shows what an internet enabled country Japan is. Japanese consumers fully embrace online commerce - here proven by their high internet penetration figure.
Russian - 109,552,842 internet users (76.1% penetration).
Russian is the official language of Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and it's considered an unofficial lingua franca in Ukraine and many former Soviet countries, including Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
German - 92,304,792 internet users (95.1% penetration).
German is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol in Italy, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and Liechtenstein.
With an extraordinarily high penetration rate, 95.1% of German speakers are internet users. Another example of a market where translation cannot be ignored.
Considering that we’ve all heard the statistic that ‘72% of online buyers whose first language is not English said they rarely or never buy from English-only websites’, harnessing these languages (getting your website translated!) is a massive part of international trade success.