The need for quality Asian languages translation has surged in the last decades, with Asia now home to the world’s largest consumer market attracting global investments from manufacturing, fintech, gaming, and e-commerce industries. International businesses are looking to break into the Asian market as the lucrative potential of this continent continues to increase.
Asian Translation - the Most Translated Asian Languages
Asian languages are important language groups for many Asia-based and US-based translation service companies. It makes sense for languages translation service providers operating in Asian countries. But how come these Asian languages become an essential part of the translation industry in the US? Because over 31% of the 44.9 million immigrants in the US were born in Asia. Since the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act in the last century, there has been a continuously increasing arrival of immigrants from Asia, especially China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
In our experience as an agency specializing in Asian languages translation, the most required Asian translation services include the following languages.
Chinese tops other Asian languages regarding translation needs or volumes. This makes it a key player in the language service industry. China is overtaking the Western world and is set to replace the US to become the world’s largest economy by 2035. The country is also home to one-fifth of the world’s population, making Chinese an important language to be reckoned with. Currently, English is the universally used business language. Still, Mandarin Chinese is emerging as a star in international business and is expected to grow its dominance in the business world. When translating written Chinese, deciding whether to use Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese in a specific Chinese market is critical.
Although Cantonese speakers only account for 4.5% of China’s population, this language is spoken by more than 80 million people across Asia. Cantonese is the official spoken language of Macau and Hong Kong, making it a popular Asian language for translation in the finance and tourism industry. It’s also a significant language used by immigrants living in Singapore and Malaysia who have descended from Southeast China. However, it’s essential to remember that while Cantonese speakers in Macau and Hong Kong use Traditional Chinese scripts, those in Singapore tend to adopt the Simplified script. Don’t forget about this rule when localizing your content into Cantonese.
Before getting displaced by China in 2010, Japan had been the world’s second-largest economy behind the US since 1968. Despite Japan’s economic shrink, it remains the fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity and the fourth-largest consumer market globally. With almost 120 million people speaking Japanese as a native language in Japan, Japanese translation is one of the sought-after Asian languages translation services simply for the sheer size of its speaker/buyer population and its influence on the Japanese market.
The Korean language is spoken by over 75 million people across Asia, including 48 million living in the Korean Peninsula, 2 million living in China, and 500,000 living in Japan. South Korea’s economy ranks fourth in Asia and thirteenth in the world. It has witnessed an incredible economical shift from an underdeveloped country to a highly developed, high-income nation within a few decades. With one of the strongest economies in Asia, the South Korean market appeals to investments abroad, generating large request for translation services from and into Korean.
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English to Asian Translation - How Difficult Is It?
English to Asian language translation can be more challenging than translation between European languages. The reason is that modern Asian languages have a much older history than most Indo-European languages. Asian languages are distant from English or other European languages with vastly different grammatical rules, verb tense, word order, sentence structures, rhetoric styles, and much more to consider when rendering the text. Such problems include the social, cultural, and historical backgrounds behind each language.
Asian languages also vastly differ, resulting in complicated and time-consuming translations between them. For example, although China locates near Japan and Korea, the Chinese language is descended from the Proto-Sinic language, and the Japanese and Korean are considered members of the Altaic language family. The writing systems of Asian languages also vary greatly.
As we mentioned earlier in this post, there are two types of Chinese characters – with the simplified characters used in Mainland China and Singapore and traditional characters used in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
Even though the ancient Chinese writing system, culture and philosophy had influenced most Asian languages, the modern Asian languages spoken in its neighboring countries have adopted varying writing scripts, with some omitting all/most Chinese characters and developing their own scripts. For example, the Koreans invented the Hangul script, and the Japanese developed Hiragana and Katakana phonetic scripts, but both languages retain some Chinese characters in their vocabulary. If you are interested in this topic, you can read more about the differences between Chinese vs Japanese vs Korean writing. For Asian languages like Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese, Khmer, and Laotion, their writing scripts consist of their own phonetic alphabets.
Summarizing Asian Translation
Translating from or to Asian languages is so complicated that only experienced (preferably native and in-country) Asian translators with linguistic skills, social-cultural and domain-specific knowledge of the content can deliver the most favorable translation results.
As an Asia-based professional language service company specializing in Asian languages translation, Wordspath can connect you with the most-qualified Asian language translator that best fills your linguistic needs. With an extensive network of linguistic talents, we work with 30,000+ linguists in Asia and worldwide, serving around the clock to get your message across to your intended audience. Fill in the form on the right to further discuss your globalization project with us.
Wordspath can help
Wordspath provides highly reliable human Asian languages translation and state-of-the-art machine translation services for content related to diverse subject matters with accuracy and consistency.
We take pride in our quality-driven workflow that combines the excellent work of our linguists, desktop publishers, project managers, customer service, and technical team. Their endless support allows Wordspath to provide first-rate language solutions in 150+ languages for thousands of customers who need to connect with the world.
Wordspath also offers machine translation post-editing services translating the content with our proprietary MT engine and having our in-house/contracted linguists review, edit, polish, and proofread the results.
Meanwhile, we are highly experienced in delivering tailor-made localization-related solutions such as desktop publishing, transcription, subtitling, and voiceover. Our ability to quickly handle a wide range of content types between nearly all language combinations sets us apart from our competitors. Should you need to consult on your best-fit language solution, you can contact us through live chat or email to info@wordspath.com. Or simply request a free quote.
