How much of the world's software is running in English?

Question

This is a really difficult question to answer, and the general answer may not be very useful (varies a lot depending on target demographic) but I'm interested to see any information on this topic. I'd like to understand how many software users worldwide I would eliminate by not localizing software. Does anybody have experience with non English speaking users getting by with software written in English?

Answer 1

This really depends on what platforms and languages you're targetting.

If you're targetting other developers:

That being said, my experience is that most software developers tend to be at least somewhat comfortable using libraries written in English, even in non-English speaking locales. This is almost a requirement, since most sample code out there and nearly every API is written in English. Some developers are more accepting of this than others, but most of the good ones just seem to accept this as an inevitable part of life.

There are exceptions, such as Chinese Python, but they're rare.

If you're targetting end users:

Things here change a bit. Then it really depends on the market. Some markets (Spain/Japan) are much more hesitant to use non-local software, in my experience. Others will use anything that works. Granted, a localized package will outsell a non-localized one, if things are even close to equal, but if your offering is unique and solves a real business problem, you can often sell anywhere.

Answer 2

Yes, developers feel comfortable with English. What do you think of

=JEŻELI(ŚREDNIA(A1;B1) <> 1; "B"; "A")

Seems stupid? Yes, it is stupid. It is Excel formula written in Polish, hence most developers in Poland thinks this suck. We use English version of Visual Studio, and very few people wants to have it translated. But this is about us, developers. On the other side there are our users. And - apart from very few exceptions - they must have software written in Polish. Their software must be localized. Why? Because some of them does not speak English at all, moreover they will need appropriate VAT rate to be applied, they want PESEL, NIP and REGON local id-numbers to be validated correctly. Even bank accounts in EU differ slightly, so it is hard to have one routine to validate them...

Localization is the must-have for every piece of software that is to be useful for business users. Developers are very happy with English :)

Answer 3

A lot, but probably not as much as you'd assume. The majority of the worlds software is corporate, and the majority of that is Windows and other Microsoft applications (Word, Excel, etc). While these run in English, they also run in about 50 other languages as well, such as Indian and Chinese.

When you factor in the sheer quantity of people in India and China, running applications with Indian and Chinese language sets, well, that's just a lot of non-english software now isn't it?

Of course, it depends largely on your target audience. Microsoft makes a lot of money from other languages, whereas your application might not benefit much from the time/effort/money that you'd have to put in to translating everything.

Answer 4

My native language is Swedish, and I'm using Flash. Recently they have made a lot of things into Swedish, like error popping up in swedish, or api documentation. I hate it, I'm much more comfortable with english, the errors in swedish make no sense to me, and searching for them on the internet basically gives nothing, because everything is in english. I think it's much better to keep everything english.

Answer 5

As others have said, whether your English-only software could sell or not depends on the market segment in a given locale, and most importantly, whether there is any locale-language competition.

You need to evaluate each major market independently, and decide on which one has the most promise. That's the one you start with (it's often Japan, because it's a rich country with relatively low tolerance for English). You'll spend a lot of time up-front internationalizing your application, and doing the localization for the first time, but the cost of localizing to subsequent languages is much lower.

Answer 6

It depends entirely on who your users are, and also on the distribution channels and language community.

• Sophisticated technical users such as software developers, researchers, engineers and doctors will often tolerate or even prefer English-language software, since they are used to dealing with English-language technical or research literature, and in many cases English technical terms are used even in native-language discussions and text.
• Non-technical users (often symbolized by "your wife" or "aunt Mildred" in usability discussions) will generally prefer native-language software even if they speak English. Unless you have no or only vastly inferior native-language competition, they will not buy your product if it's only in English.
• Retailers will often carry only native-language versions since they cater mostly to non-technical users
• The smaller a language community is, the more likely even non-technical users are used to foreign-language Films, books, and software. But the primary foreign language may not be English - it's often French or Spanish.
• The larger a language community is, the more likely people are used to have everything localized.
• Averagy proficiency in English varies a lot. Speakers of Germanic and Romance languages generally have an easier time learning it, but that's not all. Scandinavians are generally good in English, while the Japanese and Chinese are very bad on average - two huge markets you will lose almost completely when you have English-only software.