By Sarthak Bangwal

At school we were told English was the language to learn, and most of us simply accepted it. Looking back, the reason is clear: the United States and Britain were the leading economies, and anyone who wanted to trade with them had to use English. English is still a common working language almost everywhere. But the global market is changing, and so is the value of other languages.

Growing markets, growing languages

As developing countries create new trade and job opportunities, their languages gain weight too. Markets in Asia, Africa and the Middle East can be reached, but not without translation. People in these regions are proud of their cultures and expect to be addressed with respect, and speaking to them in their own language is the clearest way to show it. For businesses in India, that means language pairs such as Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, French and Spanish with English and Hindi are becoming as important as English alone.

The mother tongue builds trust

For someone living far from home, hearing their own language is a relief. It creates trust and connection. The same is true for customers, partners and officials. This is why demand for translation and interpretation keeps rising, and why clients now expect both high standards and fast delivery.

Technology helps, people decide

Working through page after page of foreign text under deadlines and style rules is demanding. Just as bankers use computers for numbers and scientists for simulations, translators use tools such as translation memory software, terminology resources and online professional networks to work faster and more consistently. Machine translation can do much of the first pass, but it is not always accurate. Human judgement is still needed to understand what the original means and to make the translation feel natural.

Two kinds of language

To talk to a computer you learn a programming language; to talk to people from other cultures you learn their languages. Both are core skills of this century. Rather than fearing new technology, translators can learn to work with it, much as early humans learned to use fire.

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