Do you happen to know how many languagesare spoken in the world?
While preparing the current letter, Idiscovered that there are an estimated 7,168 languages in the world.
So I was curious and looked into whatproportion of them Korean takes up.
Korean ranks 20th, with approximately 82million people speaking it as their first language.
The 20th rank may sound quite high among somany languages, but it's not so much so when you look at it in terms ofproportion.
It means only about 1% of the world'spopulation speaks Korean, while 99 out of 100 do not.
(Source: Ethnologue)
Then what is the most used language inthe world?
I guess most of you know the answeralready.
It is English spoken by about 1.35 billionpeople, followed by Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, and French, in that order.
(Source: Ethnologue)This means one thing.
Localization of content is a must.
Korean content is gaining traction invarious genres, including dramas, webtoons, and more. In order to capitalize on this opportunityand reach a broader market, you need to give more consideration tolocalization.
By localizing Korean content into variouslanguages, you can secure more of the international market.If translated into English, the world'smost used language, the content can potentially reach 1.35 billion people,
1.12 billion when translated into Chinese,which has the largest number of native speakers, 600 million when translated into Hindi, theofficial language of India and spoken in India and Nepal, and 540 million people when translated intoSpanish, the official language of Spain and Latin America.
These numbers really show you how manymarkets you'll be missing out on without localizing. Unfortunately, Korean content companiesare missing out on these opportunities and markets more often than you mightthink. The good news is that it's not too late.
It's because excellent content continuesto be produced in Korea and is attracting attention from many countries.
Many Korean content companies are awareof this trend and are making efforts to target the global market through activelocalization.
Such efforts are likely to pay off withthis outcome.
The success of various Korean content,including pop songs, dramas like Squid Game and D.P., and more.
The global market is expected to continueresponding favorably to Korean content. The role of localization can't beoverstated when it comes to deriving global market response.
Even if you have high-quality content, itwill be difficult to attract people from other cultures without localization.
LETR WORKS can be a solution to this. LETR WORKS can fulfill your needs foreasier and faster localization at an affordable price.
It makes it possible to localizelarge-scale content faster and better in quality with AI technology andautomation solutions.
In today's letter, I discussed theimportance of localization. I hope you enjoyed reading it, and I will be backwith the next letter.
We would love to help Korean content companiesovercome the challenges of global expansion and content localization, so pleasecontact us today if you have any questions.
Editor / Lee inhye
inhye.lee@twigfarm.net
