Languages are very essential due to the fact that it has a great influence on how we think when communicating with each other. To go along well with someone, you should understand his or her language. Every day of our life, word are important tool we use in interacting with each other, but at times, if care isn’t taken, it can be a source of frustration and misunderstanding.
We have so many kinds of languages being used by people in the world today even though there exist some who are bilinguals and multilinguals. Due to the above assertion, there are some most commonly spoken languages by people in the world and this includes : English language (spoken by over 1,130 million people), Mandarin(spoken by over 1,100 million people), Hindi(spoken by over 610 million people), Spanish (spoken by over 530 million people), French (spoken by 280 million people), Arabic (spoken by over 270 million people), Bengali (spoken by over 260 million people), Russian (spoken by over 250 million people), Portuguese (spoken by over 230 million people), Indonesia (spoken by over 190 million people). This is portrayed in the chart below:
With the variety of language machines we have today such as the Duolingo, Google Translator, Rosetta Stone (to mention a few) which enable us have quick and easy access to fragment of others languages one isn’t familiar with, it isn’t burdensome to have a taste of other people’s languages coupled with the fact that the internet also gives us the opportunity to chat and talk with people all over the world from where we are. Translating the content of your webpage for different people help to improve the quality of your website thereby serving as a boost for it.
Translating a website to a different audience is facilitated by modern technology. Taking for example, ‘ConveyThis’, it is a language machine which enable you translate your website into other languages and it does that in a natural and user-friendly way. Here is a free trial if you would like to check it out.
IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGES
Seeing it from the marketing and business point of view, having a basic understanding of multiple languages keeps you at the edge over others when it comes to advertising and to market your products and services to different people all around the world. The world now runs a global economy, therefore it will be more entreating and nice if you can make your business accessible to different audiences in their native language.
Advantage of a First Language
It is always of an extraordinary advantage for you to make the person reading your business/marketing content or material do so in their most efficient or familiar language. In a situation where there is differences in proficiency – that is, one language is more fluent than the other, – the brain has a way it activates more frontal cortex activity when reading and assimilating the less fluent language. The brain ‘responsible adult’ is the frontal cortex and it is responsible for handling planning and thinking things through rationally.
When it comes to buying, we humans don’t rationally buy things. We only buy things that fill an emotional need (this means we humans are naturally emotional being, as a result of this, we tend to buy or purchase things we felt can fill an emotional gap at that particular moment even if it’s not rational to purchase such a thing). Whenever there is an activation of the frontal cortex, the emotional thinking capacity of people are generally hold in check and thus making it quite difficult and sometimes impossible for marketers to help make a buying decision for them. In a situation whereby the marketers and the business owners are able to communicate to the buyers in a language they can easily understand and relate well with, the resultant effect is that it make them feel at ease and allows their emotions to breathe, this in turn boost sales and it produces satisfied and cheerful customers.
Benefits of Multilingualism to the Learner
The benefit of learning a second language isn’t singular, apart from the fact that it helps your bottom line, it is of a greater advantage to the brain too. As humans, there is a high tendency to delay the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease when we learn to speak a second language. To make the brain grow!, it was indicated by some studies that language learning is an important factor.
In addition, to be more effective in one’s native language, it is quite important to learn a language one isn’t familiar with. One important thing known to help people manage attention control, improve their speech and grammar, helps in writing in their mother tongue and finally help people multitask is Languages.
Importance of Languages in Business
The advantage of being bilingual on a personal level is that it help in career development. In some studies carried out, it is shown that knowing more than one language helps so much in boosting problem-solving skills, it lead to an increase in empathy, and finally it helps to broaden one’s career development.
It is very important when it comes to communicating with one’s prospective customers to do it in their native language or in a language they are more familiar with either via your website or verbally.
Writing your web content in your customer language attract them to you because about 7 in 10 users has said they are more likely to buy from a website written in their native language. According to a little statistic carried out, it is shown that 75% of the world’s population doesn’t speak English as their original language, hence, by translating your website, you’ve succeeded in increasing your customer conversion rate by 54%.
Importance of Languages for Everyone
It’s no strange thing that our speech and means of communication oftentimes reveals our culture and the kind of society we are from, hence, understanding another language can help you to understand other nations, people, and places. Having an understanding of new perspectives in our everyday life is an essential feature of personal growth and development. When it comes to business, it’s the difference between succeeding and failing.
Doing business with someone entails you having an understanding of who they are. It involves you knowing their core values, their needs and lastly their wants. Understanding what someone is saying makes it easier for you to comprehend their personality, hence, learning their language provides you the opportunity to know them the more, giving you room for more connection with them on an inter-personal level.
Language Proficiency and the Adult
For some adult, it was when they begin inquiring about language learning that they found out their natural inclination for it. If one has been monolingual all his life, it’s very possible to gain fluency in the second or subsequent languages. Another thing to note when it comes to learning a foreign language is that native-level proficiency or fluency isn’t the primary goal of learning it.
A sign of honor and respect for the cultures and the people you’re working with regardless of the fact that you aren’t an expert in it yet is putting every effort in place and taking out time in seeing to it that you learn the foreign language. This is the initial step in acquiring a deeper appreciation of the beauty and the awe inspiring of the world that surround us and the good people we’re so fortunate to meet and we work with.
Language are Important for Everyone; The Why
Having a basic understanding about a language give a person an opportunity to be more familiar with the cultures of such language and being familiar with a particular culture one wasn’t born or brought up with allows a person have a fresh and broader perspective about their own culture and society. The good plus the bad now becomes clearer- the things you appreciates and love and furthermore, the thing you would like to change but working on it. In making your own little corner of the world a little more fitting, it is quite importance you have an understanding of how other people thinking pattern works, how things are being done by them, and in so doing, idea are generated for the former.
Perfection may not be an obvious case at the start of setting out time to learn a new language, no need beating yourself out for that, it all happens to we humans. All that is expected of you is never to stop giving it a trial! Remember ‘Rome is not built in a day’ goes the popular saying, so don’t quit at the first start, ‘Don’t thrown in the towel’, though it may look a bit herculean, the goal is to keep learning till mastery is gained.
The journey of translating your website into your customers native language in order to communicate better with them, thereby increasing your customer pool rate is what you can start in the today with the help of ‘ConveyThis’, ConveyThis is helpful because it allows you communicate clearly in another language via your website leaving you with the responsibility of mastering the face-to-face communication which you will be needing soon, but in the meantime, you can create your free account here to get started.