Chinese Document Translation provides the following information:
Among the most spoken languages in the world, Chinese Document Translation would probably rank first given the total number of people globally who speak Chinese (including other dialects). Moreover, if we consider the total number of foreigners who learn Chinese as well as countries that include Chinese as an official language, then Chinese would not only be on par with English, but it is actually more widely used than French and Spanish.
Are there other systems that evaluate the real impact of Chinese language worldwide? UNESCO’s Translationum database has collected 17 million books translated and published in various languages and subjects (including Literature, Humanities, History, Science and Art) around the world from 1979 to 2005. Let's analyze this database and see which (source) languages are commonly translated. We will also take a look at the world’s most widely-translated authors and analyze the position of Chinese document translation relative to other languages in the world.
Here are the TOP 10 Source Languages or top 10 most widely translated source languages; the number in parentheses represents the source language translated to other languages:
1. English (1,000,758)/ 2. French (186,036)/ 3. German (169,387)/4.Russian (93,779)/5. Italian (55,397)/6. Spanish (43,365)/7. Swedish (30,738)/8. Spanish (16,602)/9. Danish (16,222)/10. Dutch (16,050)
Japanese ranks 13th (13,437), and down to the 23rd is Chinese with a total of 7,411 original works translated to other languages.
Now, let’s take a look at the TOP 10 Target Languages or top 10 most active source languages translated to other languages:
1.German 270,484）/2.Spanish （206,779）/3.French （203,559）/4.Japanese （117,769）/5.English（115,710）/6.Dutch （101,763）/7. Portuguese （71,291）/8. Polish （64,119）/9. Russian（62,983）/10.Danish（59,014）
Chinese document translation is neither included in the top 10 nor in the TOP 20, 30 and 40. It ranks 49th with only 1922 materials translated to other languages, narrowly beating Tamil (1,763) and way behind Japanese, which ranks fourth. It also lags behind Korean (21,641), which ranks 21st.
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