Chinese soon to be second most important language for business

The leading languages of the global economy Chinese soon to be second most important language for business What are the world’s most important languages as regards economic significance and their related career prospects? The Steinke Institute in Bonn has developed a Language Index that extrapolates the gross national product for all the countries of the world to the year 2025, and converts this into a value relevant for their respective languages. The most significant results from the Steinke Language Index are as follows. Even in 2025, English will still easily maintain its position as the

most important foreign language, whose study is essential for career success. Chinese occupies the second place. The following places from three to ten are taken by Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Portuguese and Korean. Three of the Top 10 most important languages are thus from the Far East. Measured on growth of importance from today to 2025, the following languages are also making strong progress: Turkish, Hindi, Polish, Rumanian, Farsi, Thai and also Vietnamese.

The Steinke Language Index is especially interesting for companies and translators in relation to the trend for translation requirements. Using the Index, companies can identify the target languages that will be especially important for translation and localization in the future. Private individuals such as translators, who intend to master another source language, will also gain a valuable indication of potential gaps in the market with respect to their professional careers. A second Index drawn up by the Steinke Institute, the Steinke Language Index for Foreign Trade, seeks to answer the question of which languages are currently most important for German nationals – or will be in the future. The basis for this Index is Germany’s foreign trade volume.

This Index shows that English will also be far and away the most important foreign language for German nationals, even in the long term. Chinese will increasingly gain in importance, and reach a level almost equal to French. Four Eastern European languages are also among the eleven most important foreign languages: Russian, Polish, Czech and Hungarian. Placed fourth, and thus far more important than many would assume, is the Dutch language (including Flemish). Spanish will soon attain an importance at least on a level with Italian, while Arabic, Turkish, Japanese and Korean will all gain in importance.