The question about the extent of how dominant the English language is on the Internet has been historically controversial. To some extent, it is still the domain of controversy, but there is no doubt about the fact that the relative representation of languages other than English on the internet is growing. Then it is worth considering that out of the more than 7,000 languages spoken in the world only 8.33% of those have an existence on the internet.
What does the data show?
To avoid controversy and state the bland facts, we need to look at two primary indicators, i.e., language of users on the internet and the language of the contents. In terms of internet users, the consensus generally is that the top 3 languages are English, Chinese, and Spanish. But beyond that, there isn’t much of a consensus.
When it comes to content, there is no consensus about the order of languages beyond the simple fact that English seems to be more dominant regarding content. Though the value of English varies from one source to the next with some putting it at 32% and the others at 52%.
Language of users on the internet
The most reliable source for this data is the ITU. The United Nations has two sources of its data about people connected to the internet with a bit of difference:
- InternetWorldStats puts the top 10 languages in terms of those connected to the internet as English, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Malay, Russian, German, and French.
- The FUNREDES/MAAY Observatory puts the top ten languages about the same as IWS, with the inclusion of Hindi and German.
Language of Internet contents
There are two different sources that point to the contents of the internet and with a couple of differences.
- W3Techs states that English, Russian and Japanese along with Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Italian, French and German are leading languages.
- FUNREDES/MAAYA Observatory states that English, Chinese and Spanish are the top tier languages. Then that’s followed by Russian, Portuguese, Italian, Malay, Hindi, Arabic, German, Spanish and French.
What does all this data mean for businesses?
Well even if English is still considered the leading language in terms of content, it hardly makes up 33% of the internet’s users who understand the language. When you combine Chinese, Russian and Spanish for instance, these three languages make up roughly 40% of internet users if not more.
Businesses should still focus on having English language content which is good for SEO, and overall international targeting. But by having the same content in region-specific Russian, Spanish and Chinese for instance, many businesses will be able to target a much bigger market. Considering that it will make up over 70% of the internet. So, their ability to drum up more sales increases exponentially.
A professional translation service can handle these translations to and from English in a multitude of languages. Most of all they are well worth the cost when you take overall revenue increase in consideration, by targeting a much wider audience online.