Glossary entry (derived from question below)
English term or phrase:
African languages
English answer:
English, French, Afrikaans
English term
Canada
ALWAYS GOOD! ALWAYS ON TIME!
Native in: Spanish 
, English
Works in: English to Spanish, Spanish to English
African languages(need advice)
Please forgive my ignorance, but I have a potential job from a client who wishes to target the African market, among others. However, he is not sure which language(s) he should target.
My first guess is Afrikaans for South Africa. But I would apprciate it if you could give me some insight as to the right market/language to target to get the most response. EX. to sell videophones.
Thanks in advance for your input.
Carolina Ramirez
Apr 9, 2008 02:48: gianfranco changed "Field" from "Other" to "Science" , "Field (specific)" from "(none)" to "Linguistics"
Responses
Brazil
Zen and the Art of Glossary Maintenance
Native in: Italian (Variant: Standard-Italy) 
Works in: English to Italian, Italian to English
English, French, Arabic, Portuguese, Afrikaans
In the first case the choice would involve very high costs and huge logistic problems, given the large number of languages used.
It would be also very problematic to set the terminology and even the translators for many of such languages.
It is more sensible to produce what appears to be fairly standard marketing literature in the major languages used for business, namely English and French, plus Arabic for North African countries and perhaps even Portuguese and Afrikaans.
It should be sufficient to cover most of the African market.
GM
Italian by name ... English by nature!
Native in: English
Works in: Italian to English, English, Italian
English - without a shadow of a doubt.
| agree |
Kim Metzger
: Absolutely!
5 mins
|
| agree |
Atacama
: English is far more dominant throughout Africa.
10 mins
|
| agree |
cochrum
11 mins
|
| agree |
mónica alfonso
22 mins
|
| disagree |
gianfranco
: what about French, Arabic, Portuguese, Afrikaans,Swahili...
1 hr
|
Ukraine
Ukrainian and Russian Translator
Native in: Russian , Ukrainian
Works in: English to Ukrainian, English to Russian, Spanish to Ukrainian, and 7 more.
English & French
If your client wants to target each country in particular he'll have to deal with virtually dozens, if not hundreds, of languages, many of which are quite rare; additionally, even presumably state languages are often spoken by only a certain percentage of the population in each country.
Good luck!
Oleg
Mexico
Committed to Quality and Service
Native in: English (Variant: US)
Works in: German to English
Also French, Portuguese
Sweden
Medical Translator
Native in: Swedish , English
Works in: English to Swedish, Danish to Swedish, German to Swedish, and 13 more.
rosettaproject.org provides the answers country by country
Chinese and English into Ukrainian
Native in: Russian , Ukrainian
Works in: Chinese to Ukrainian, English to Russian, Chinese to English, and 11 more.
Something went wrong...