At Voiceover.Cafe we monitor on-line language usage for marketing and communications, in order to support our video translation, voiceover and localisation requirements.
Although we offer multilingual services in over 40 global languages, the majority of our business is based in the top 10 languages used on the internet.
What is really interesting on the stats below is how the number of internet users has now reached almost half of the world’s population of around 3.4 Billion with English and Chinese users running neck and neck at 1.4 Billion each.
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Top Ten Languages Used in the Web – November 30, 2015
(Number of Internet Users by Language) Source: Internet World Stats. |
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| Language | Internet Users |
Internet Penetration (% Population) |
Growth Users (15 years) |
Global %’age | World Population (for this language) |
| English | 873M | 62% | 520% | 26% | 1,398M |
| Chinese | 704M | 50% | 2,081% | 21% | 1,398M |
| Spanish | 257M | 58% | 1,312% | 8% | 441M |
| Arabic | 168M | 45% | 6,593% | 5% | 375M |
| Portugese | 132M | 50% | 1,641% | 4% | 263M |
| Japanese | 115M | 91% | 144% | 3% | 127M |
| Russian | 103M | 71% | 3,227% | 3% | 146M |
| Malay | 99M | 35% | 1,626% | 3% | 287M |
| French | 98M | 25% | 715% | 3% | 385M |
| German | 84M | 88% | 204% | 3% | 95M |
| TOP 10 TOTAL | 2633M | 53% | 787% | 78% | 4,917M |
| Other | 734M | 31% | 1,043% | 22% | 2,343M |
| WORLD TOTAL | 3367M | 46% | 833% | 100% | 7,260M |
Chinese, Arabic, Malay and Russian have seen the greatest growth of new users over the past few years and the Chinese will in all probability continue exponentially with its online growth.
Another interesting fact is that the six official languages of the United Nations (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish) are all included in the table.
If you have any interesting facts about what languages you use for your localisation needs, we would love to hear from you!