Translation Services Help You Deal With Hard-to-Translate Languages (Part 1)
by Keylingo
In the world of translation and interpreting not all languages are treated equally. The ability to translate between any two languages takes a fair depth of knowledge and contextual understanding, meaning that languages that are difficult to learn are also more difficult to source translations for because it’s not easy for translators to add them to their multi-lingual rosters. Then, of course, some languages simply have more translators available for them than others, making it easier to source translation to or from these languages. English, for instance, is popular worldwide and English-to-Spanish is one of the most commonly requested translation events. However, you will be pretty hard-pressed to find a single translator willing and able to tackle a Korean-to-Hindi translation, or more than a handful even familiar with Icelandic.
Hard Languages To Source
When it comes to sourcing high-quality translations, Google Translate just isn’t an option. You need someone who knows not only the interplay of syntax and grammar, but understands cultural nuances. Especially when it comes to business and contract translation, accuracy and clarity of meaning is a key part of the service. For this reason, you would expect native-speaking population size to play a large part in determining the availability of translator services.
However, a recent survey, recently asked it’s 140 survey responders to rate which languages they had experienced the most trouble sourcing, and the results are not what you might think! French comes in first as the top most difficult language to get an excellent translation for at 15%, shortly followed by Japanese and Arabic. At around 10% comes Korean and German, followed by Portuguese and Chinese.
These days, if you need a high-quality translation in any but the most common second languages in your region, you’ll need to deal with real professionals. The more difficult a language is to translate, the harder time you will have to get a good translation. Join us next time and we’ll talk about what makes these languages difficult and how a professional translation service can help you with as many language translations as you need. For more information about translation services, contact us today!
Related Articles
What Is Privacy-First AI Translation?
Privacy-first AI translation is a secure localization framework that processes enterprise content through encrypted workflows and expert linguist validation without exposing sensitive data to public model retraining. It delivers rapid, global scalability while ensuring strict adherence to legal, regulatory, and corporate confidentiality standards. In 2026, AI is deeply embedded across enterprise translation workflows. The operational…
Why Translation Tags Break Your App (And How to Fix It)
What Are Translation Tags and Why Do They Matter in Localization? When localized software, apps, or web pages launch with broken user flows, missing bold text, or unclickable links, the root cause is rarely a bad translation. Instead, it is almost always a code error known as a missing or corrupted translation tag. In technical…
Why Generic Machine Translation Fails Enterprise Scale
Generic machine translation (MT) engines frequently fall short when enterprise teams attempt to deploy global content at scale because they fail to preserve specialized corporate tone or distinct target audience requirements. Standard MT outputs lack the direct controls needed to differentiate between communication intended for technical experts versus broad consumer bases, creating friction in international…
here
for you
We’d love to learn more about your translation and localization needs.