By the Numbers
In 1822, linguist Jean-François Champollion translated portions of the inscription on the Rosetta Stone, a slab covered with hieroglyphics, characters, and Greek. His work helped decode an inaccessible language and popularize ancient Egyptian culture. Today translation continues to be essential for cross-cultural interaction.
41 | The number of languages offered by education app Duolingo. |
Duolingo and other language-learning applications help users learn new languages—from Arabic to the fictional Klingon—from their phones. Duolingo leads the pack: in 2021, the app recorded 9.6 million daily users around the world.
Sources: statista.com/statistics/1248025/duolingo-dau-worldwide and duolingo.com
| $62.6 billion | The value of the global language services market in 2021. |
The language services market involves translation, education, and other components. It often supports governmental agencies as well as the healthcare, technology, and finance industries. The market has been growing rapidly in recent years, doubling in size between 2009 and 2019.
Sources: prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-language-services-market-2022-to-2027---industry-trends-share-size-growth-opportunity-and-forecasts-301496027 and statista.com/statistics/257656/size-of-the-global-language-services-market
7 | The average number of languages into which a company translates its content. |
The average company has footprints in seven international markets. As companies continue expanding to new markets and the demand for translation services increases, forecasts predict the language services market will grow at a rate of 5.8 percent in the next five years.
Sources: languagedepartment.com/blog/top-20-most-important-stats-for-businesses-using-translation and advancemarketanalytics.com/reports/9881-global-language-services-market-2
76 | The percentage of consumers who prefer to make online purchases from sites written in their native languages. |
The majority of online shoppers prioritize spending on products whose marketing and retailing materials are written in their own languages. What’s more, 40 percent of customers have said that they will not buy from sites with content in other languages.
Source: csa-research.com/blogs-events/CSA-in-the-media/press-releases/consumers-prefer-their-own-language
3rd | BYU’s ranking for number of graduates with foreign-language degrees. |
Offering courses on upwards of 90 languages, BYU produces more foreign-language graduates than almost any other university in the nation. BYU Marriott’s Whitmore Global Business Center helps students increase their marketability by offering 11 business language courses.
Sources: chronicle.com/article/which-colleges-grant-the-most-bachelors-degrees-in-foreign-languages and catalog.byu.edu/humanities/center-language-studies and marriott.byu.edu/gbc/academics/courses
500 million+ | The number of people who use Google Translate. |
On Google Translate’s 10-year anniversary in 2016, the company announced that the site translates more than 100 billion words a day and that 92 percent of translations originated outside the United States. Today the site offers translation services in more than 130 languages.
Source: blog.google/products/translate/ten-years-of-google-translate
