The European Commission (E.C.) recently published a 125-page Flash Eurobarometer report (#313) based on a Gallup survey of language preferences among internet users in 23 European Union (E.U.) countries. The data stems from telephone interviews conducted at the request of any service of the E.C. at the end of January 2011.The report charts volumes of data on language preferences by country and demographic segment and provides an excellent reference for information publishers and the language industry. An especially interesting set of tables and charts shows second-language preference and acceptance of English when in-language content is not available. The descriptive text is heavy on data but light on analysis, so here are some thoughts that occurred to CSA while reading it.

The data in this report echoes our own findings on language preferences; for example, “Although 9 in 10 Internet users in the E.U. said that, when given a choice of languages, they always visited a website in their own language, a slim majority (53%) would accept using an English version of a website if it was not available in their own language.” Compare this to our finding that, “Across the eight countries, nearly three quarters (72.1%) spend most or all of their time on sites in their own language. Less than a fifth (17.6%) split their visitation equally between natal-language and Anglophones sites, while just one out of 10 respondents (10.4%) favors English properties” (see “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy: Why Language Matters on Global Websites,” Sep06). Another example is “more than 4 in 10 (44%) Internet users in the EU thought they missed interesting information because websites were not available in a language they understood. In Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, Cyprus, Spain and Greece, a majority of respondents agreed with this statement (between 51%-60%).” Compare that datapoint to our finding that “Nearly six out of ten (59.4%) of our total sample of 2,430 consumers agreed or strongly agreed with this statement that “I am comfortable deciding which products to buy even if the information is not in my language.” The percentages flipped when we factored in language proficiency – 56.9% of respondents with no or little confidence told us that they did not feel comfortable. The questions and the intent of the surveys were different, but the data is strikingly parallel.

In our B2B follow-up research on this subject in 2008, we found that even in English-tolerant countries like Sweden, four out of five business buyers – when considering all the descriptive, functional, and supporting elements of a complex product like software – “prefer to purchase products with the full assemblage of components translated and localized” (see “Localization Matters,” Nov08). Another finding confirmed in the E.U.’s recent data is dramatically lower acceptance of banking in a non-native language compared to browsing or communicating with friends. Our 2006 data also showed financial services to be the most sensitive to language preference. In the Gallup study. Only 19% of Europeans said they never browse to get information in a language other than their own, but 42% said they never search or buy products and services in other languages, and 76% said they never transact banking online in another language. In our research, non-native speakers who self-identified as being confident in English still, as a group, were 4.5 times more likely to buy localized than English software.

The E.C. report found that heavy users of the internet are more likely to use another language. This is one of many correlations that beg the un-asked question: “What is the relation of the amount of available content (and interactions) in a given language and the reported preferences of that language’s native speakers?”  “Roughly two-thirds (65%) of “heavy” Internet users used at least one additional language to read or watch content on the Internet; this proportion decreased to 27% for the least frequent internet users (that is, those who had used the internet about once in the past four weeks). Read more.

See: Common Sense Advisory