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 like line breaks and the way that
sentences are constructed and these do vary from language
to language.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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, Mandarin |
East Asia (Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan) |
| English |
Many countries (globally) |
| Spanish |
Many countries (South America, USA, Spain, North Africa) |
| Arabic |
Middle East (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Yemen) |
| Bengali |
Bangladesh, India, Singapore |
| Hindi |
India, Nepal, Singapore |
| Russian |
Many countries (Eastern Europe, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine) |
| Portuguese |
Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal |
| Japanese |
Japan, Singapore, Taiwan |
| German |
Many countries (Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Eastern Europe) |
| Chinese, Wu |
China |
| Javanese |
Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore |
| Korean |
East Asia (China, Japan, N. Korea, S. Korea, Singapore, Thailand) |
| French |
Many countries (Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland, Africa) |
| Turkish |
Bulgaria, Cyprus,
Macedonia, Romania, Turkey, Chinese, Mandarin |
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