Languages

Humans have been using language for as long as we’ve been human—at least 500,000 years—and writing it down in a systematic way for over 5,000. Today, there are an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 languages, although such statistics start to seem arbitrary as soon as we attempt to define the term with any precision at all; What differentiates a bona fide language from the many dialects along with which it evolved? Can we truly separate a language from the culture that speaks it?

In today’s hyper-globalized business landscape, some are quick to dismiss the utility of learning a language that isn’t English (or Mandarin). However, the average proficiency rates even of English—80 percent of whose speakers are non-native—have a static or negative trend in a number of wealthy nations according to Education First’s 2015 figures, including France, Norway, Singapore, Korea, as well as every Middle Eastern and North African country polled except for Jordan and the UAE. This underscores the continuing importance of foreign language education, and even more so, translation services.

LingPerfect can translate documents of all kinds, in almost any major language, from the six official working languages of the United Nations (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish), to every one of the European Union’s 24 official languages, plus several dozen additional East Asian and Southeast Asian languages and more. See below for a complete list.