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The importance of multilingualism in communication




The king of Aragon was keen on giving his people the chance to be educated in maths and medicine using their native language. He continued spending fortunes to ensure that every valuable medicine book is translated into Latin.

Nowadays, public access to information is governed by the means used to deliver this information. Technology has provided the tools to diversify the types and forms of dissemination. From the publication of journals to the instant messaging, the core driver-element in the whole process is always the "people". People's thirst for information is always there, it gets stronger and more acute when it comes to vital and crucial information; such as health or safety-related information.

Language is still the main instrument used to convey ideas and to communicate messages. Mother tongue is still the first choice to interact with the world. Studies have show that our perception and understanding of what is being said in our mother tongue is never 100% accurate. Thus, our understanding of what is being said in a foreign language is far from being perfect. People are more confident and more secure when they use their own language(s) in any comprehension or expression process.


Total number of Internet users in the world is around 3.4 billion (IWS estimate, November 2015). English language represents 29.5%. Adding one of the top 9 languages (Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, French; German, Arabic, Portuguese, Korean and Italian) to English will increase your Organization's presence by (2.4%-21%) and adding the 9 languages will increase the figure to  80%! This is what multilingual communication  does mean in terms of figures: delivering information in languages understood by more than 80% of people on earth instead of 15% (English language maximum outreach as first and second language); a very simple equation, with a huge impact on your business.

* Michael McVaugh, University of North Carolina.


 Machine Translation