e.g. Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog

These languages are well supported on the web and also in print software, despite a variety of scripts. Typesetting can be complicated with unusual scripts and fonts. There are specific rules for things such as line breaks and the way that sentences are constructed and these do vary from language to language.

e.g. Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Kurmanji, Sorani, Dari

Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Sorani are all languages that are written from right to left. They pose a special problem in print and on the web because of this. Special software and fonts are required to be able to produce documents ready for printing and we have to create special templates in order to produce materials such as brochures.

 

e.g. Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian

The Languages of Eastern Europe are written in one of two scripts. Some, such as Russian and Bulgarian, are written in the Cyrillic script. Some of the other languages are written in the Latin script. The Latin based languages use a large array of diacritics (different accents on characters), which are often unique to a single language, and can be difficult to reproduce accurately when typesetting a document.

 

e.g. Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil

Font issues and the lack of international encoding standards make the Indian languages difficult to represent in print and on the web. Urdu, for example, is a language that, like Arabic, reads from right to left, and therefore requires special software to handle it. The six languages listed above are the main languages from the Indian sub-continent, that are spoken in the UK.

 

e.g. English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish.

These languages pose no special problems when it comes to producing web or printed materials. English, French, German and Spanish are widely used outside of Europe, in Africa, America, Asia, but there are regional differences.

 

There are differing views on the number of people speaking each language. The list below is for the top spoken languages, as a first or second language. The geographic area of usage of each language does vary significantly, and is changing as people emigrate.

Language	Main Regions of Usage
Chinese	China, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Taiwan
English	Many countries around the world
Spanish	Many countries, including countries in South America, USA, Spain and North Africa
Arabic	Throughout the Middle East and North Africa
Bengali	Bangladesh, India and Singapore
Hindi	India, Nepal and Singapore
Russian	Many countries in Eastern Europe
Portuguese	Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Portugal
Japanese	Japan, Singapore and Taiwan
German	Austria, Germany and Switzerland are the main ones
Korean	Countries in East Asia such as China, Japan, N. Korea, S. Korea, Singapore and Thailand
French	Countries such as Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland and some countries in Africa
Turkish	Bulgaria, Cyprus, Macedonia, Romania and Turkey