T-Index 2006, the languages that matter on the web

T-Index

Which languages offer the most potential for your website?


T-Index helps you identify the languages used by the people that will most likely buy from your website or your advertisers. It combines the Internet population and its estimated GDP per capita.

T-Index is a statistical index developed by Translated. It is a percentage value that indicates the market share of each language on the Internet and the languages that offer the best sales potential when translating your website.

T-Index data summary 2006

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  Languages T-Index Cumulative
T-Index		 Countries Internet population Internet penetration GDP p.c. of Int. pop.*
(!) Restricted access to Internet
(*) As reliable data do not exist, this amount has been estimated by us.
(**) India has been included in the English language market as English is widely used in general business and on the web.
* GDP per capita of the Internet population (!) Most of the population has restricted Internet access (*)As reliable data do not exist, this amount has been estimated by us. (**) India has been included in the English language market as English is widely used in general business and on the web.
1 English 42.7% 42.731% 56 330,719,196 19.7 % $47,491
2 Japanese 8.9% 51.666% 1 86,300,000 67.7 % $38,056
3 German 6.8% 58.475% 4 58,870,437 61.4 % $42,511
4 Spanish 6.1% 64.588% 21 70,453,667 18.0 % $31,890
5 French 4.9% 69.511% 22 41,283,087 14.2 % $43,833
6 Chinese Simplified (!) 3.9% 73.449% 2 123,726,300 9.4 % $11,701
7 Italian 3.4% 76.874% 4 29,250,131 49.8 % $43,037
8 Korean 2.8% 79.656% 2 33,905,000 47.1 % $30,160
9 Portuguese 2.4% 82.103% 7 35,043,760 15.1 % $25,661
10 Russian (!) 2.3% 84.367% 5 27,779,400 15.4 % $29,962
11 Chinese Traditional 2.2% 86.558% 3 18,879,713 62.0 % $42,644
12 Dutch 1.8% 88.347% 3 13,896,328 60.0 % $47,320
13 Arabic (!) 1.4% 89.781% 19 23,112,400 7.0 % $22,816
14 Turkish (!) 1.2% 90.984% 1 16,000,000 22.7 % $27,628
15 Polish 0.79% 91.772% 1 10,600,000 27.5 % $27,317
16 Swedish 0.76% 92.536% 1 6,800,000 75.4 % $41,297
17 Malay (!) 0.64% 93.178% 2 11,072,000 44.7 % $21,311
18 Norwegian 0.51% 93.690% 1 3,140,000 68.1 % $59,972
19 Greek 0.51% 94.197% 2 4,098,000 35.7 % $45,421
20 Farsi (!) 0.45% 94.650% 2 7,530,000 7.5 % $22,145
21 Danish 0.44% 95.092% 1 3,762,500 69.0 % $43,199
22 Thai (!) 0.43% 95.527% 1 8,420,000 13.0 % $18,959
23 Catalan 0.42% 95.951% 2 3,609,604 47.4 % $43,226
24 Czech 0.41% 96.364% 1 5,100,000 49.8 % $29,770
25 Indonesian 0.38% 96.743% 1 18,000,000 7.3 % $7,740
26 Hebrew 0.37% 97.112% 1 3,700,000 58.2 % $36,639
27 Finnish 0.36% 97.476% 1 3,286,000 62.8 % $40,753
28 Romanian 0.27% 97.749% 2 5,346,000 20.0 % $18,708
29 Hungarian 0.25% 98.002% 1 3,050,000 30.6 % $30,598
30 Vietnamese (!) 0.21% 98.210% 1 14,210,244 16.8 % $5,367
31 Tagalog 0.17% 98.385% 1 7,820,000 8.7 % $8,217
32 Slovak 0.17% 98.553% 1 2,500,000 46.0 % $24,695
33 Ukrainian 0.17% 98.719% 1 5,278,100 11.3 % $11,566
34 Afrikaans 0.16% 98.882% 1 1,785,000 11.5 % $33,695
35 Punjabi 0.14% 99.026% 1 10,500,000 6.3 % $5,036
36 Bulgarian 0.14% 99.162% 1 2,200,000 29.8 % $22,600
37 Croatian 0.11% 99.273% 1 1,451,100 32.3 % $28,300
38 Slovenian 0.10% 99.376% 1 1,090,000 54.2 % $34,781
39 Lithuanian 0.093% 99.470% 1 1,221,700 34.1 % $28,018
40 Hindi 0.090% 99.560% 1 6,000,000 3.7 % $5,534
41 Luxembourgish 0.084% 99.644% 1 315,000 66.4 % $98,433
42 Serbian 0.069% 99.713% 2 1,517,000 15.1 % $16,770
43 Latvian 0.066% 99.780% 1 1,030,000 45.3 % $23,597
44 Estonian 0.052% 99.831% 1 690,000 52.1 % $27,451
45 Bosnian 0.031% 99.862% 1 806,400 17.9 % $14,204
46 Icelandic 0.029% 99.891% 1 258,000 86.2 % $41,233
47 Azerbaijani 0.024% 99.915% 1 678,800 8.5 % $12,881
48 Macedonian 0.022% 99.937% 1 392,671 19.1 % $20,683
49 Maltese 0.014% 99.951% 1 127,200 31.8 % $41,072
50 Uzbek (!) 0.011% 99.963% 1 880,000 3.2 % $4,724
51 Sinhala (!) 0.0071% 99.970% 1 280,000 1.4 % $9,369
52 Mongolian 0.0047% 99.974% 1 268,300 9.5 % $6,416
53 Georgian 0.0046% 99.979% 1 175,600 3.8 % $9,534
54 Armenian 0.0037% 99.983% 1 150,000 5.0 % $9,067
55 Inuktitut, Greenlandic 0.0027% 99.985% 1 38,000 67.4 % $25,892
56 Albanian 0.0025% 99.988% 1 75,000 2.1 % $12,469
57 Faroese 0.0025% 99.990% 1 33,000 69.8 % $27,888
58 Swahili 0.0022% 99.993% 1 333,000 0.9 % $2,452
59 Bengali 0.0020% 99.995% 1 300,000 0.2 % $2,504
60 Nepali 0.0013% 99.996% 1 175,000 0.6 % $2,777
61 Turkmen (!) 0.0011% 99.997% 1 36,000 0.7 % $10,786
62 Maldivian 0.00074% 99.998% 1 19,000 5.3 % $14,301
63 Burmese (!) 0.00050% 99.998% 1 78,000 0.2 % $2,349
64 Khmer 0.00048% 99.999% 1 41,000 0.3 % $4,344
65 Somali 0.00047% 99.999% 2 99,000 1.1 % $1,759
66 Amharic 0.00043% 100.000% 1 113,000 0.2 % $1,397
67 Lao 0.00028% 100.000% 1 25,000 0.4 % $4,067

T-Index Map.

Internet Censorship

In order to benefit from local users, translating your content just isn’t enough in some countries. Below is a map of countries for which the T-Index may provide information that is difficult to interpret without an understanding of local Internet limitations.

Internet Freedom Map | Source: Reporters without Borders http://en.rsf.org

Sources

Statistics used in the T-Index study were taken from the following reliable Internet based sources.

The number of Internet users for each country was taken from the Internet World Stats website which provides up-to-date world Internet statistics: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm.

In order to assign each country to a language market, we looked at the most commonly used languages in business, and online, in each country in question. Our worldwide network of freelance translators has also contributed to the project, helping to make it a reliable tool that reflects the reality of each country.

The total population of each country was taken from the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook (Washington, DC): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/.

GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita data were taken from the International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook Database. For the countries or territories for which the GDP per capita was not indicated in the International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook Database, the data were taken from the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook.

To determine if a country has restricted access to online information, we looked at the ranking given by the international non-governmental organization Reporters without Borders, available on its official website: http://en.rsf.org/internet.html.

The percentage shares of income indicated by quintiles were taken from the online statistical data of the World Bank's Development Research Group: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.05TH.20. Not all the data refer to the same year (the World Bank data are from 1992 to 2009).

This material can be freely reused and shared only if a link back to this page is provided and it is made clear to the user that the data came from the T-Index study. Copy and paste the following statement:

T-Index Study, 2006 www.translated.net/en/languages-that-matter-2006. The T-Index Study was carried out by Translated, a translation agency whose fast and easy professional service is completely Internet-based. Translated was founded in 1999 and already serves 14,000 customers worldwide.

Credits

Many thanks to all the people that provided us useful data or tips (in alphabetical order)

Contacts

For all further information, please contact aurore@translated.net

Tags

languages that matter, top languages, list of languages, website translate, website translation, most used languages, website localization, ranking languages, language market share, T-Index, languages online, Internet users, Internet usage, world languages, Internet statistics, Internet by language, business languages, Internet usage statistics, number of Internet users, Internet population, multilingual website, Internet penetration rate