I was at a client’s office a few weeks ago and we had a lively discussion on the problems they were having supporting a requirement for translation to Dhivehi. Dhivehi, also known as Maldivian and Mahl, is spoken by around 350,000 people in the Maldives and Minicoy. This particular client had been challenged for a number of years by one of their clients for Dhivehi versions of content but had never succesfully orchestrated that translation using their pre-existing vendor relationships. Cutting a long story short we were able to support that requirement but it started me thinking. What role do vendors have in supporting rare languages?

As professionals in the localization world we tend to deal with the top five languages most of the time, the top 50 some of the time and occasionally the top 100. Languages outside that are only tackled on an occasional basis. Dhivehi falls into that latter category (I believe we only have a couple of other clients with that language requirement) but there is another category of languages as well – those are the so called Endangered Languages. Estimates of how languages are in danger of extinction vary but the commonly accepted number is between 2500 and 6000 depending on which expert you ask. Beyond that there is a much less talked about category of languages that aren’t endangered but also aren’t commercially or globally viable.

Superhero

K. David Harrison is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Swarthmore College but as one of the founders of Living Tongues perhaps he is better known as the world’s superhero for endangered languages: He has written books, has appeared in almost every newspaper in the world, and has even reached the pinnacle of media – he was on The Colbert Report - which would be compulsory TV in my house if we had cable! His most recent book is a bit of a mouthful “When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge” doesn’t concentrate on proving that languages are dieing - that battle has been won and most researchers agree that outside the top languages  there is a steady and rapid decline in language use. Harrison concentrates on my favorite question – “So what, who cares?”. This isn’t a translation or a localization book and even goes beyond anthropology. It is a profile of humanity.

So what, who cares

Harrison has spent many years working with communities whose languages are dieing or have died. The Tuvans (as obsessed over by Richard Feynman) have a vibrant culture but their language is dying – being replaced by Russian. Using the Tuvans and a hundred other examples, Harrison helps us understand why languages are vanishing (urbanization rather than design) and what we lose when those languages disappear.

Through anecdotal stories gathered through years of working within communities Harrison illustrates some of the problems – in the generational shift when the largely oral languages are replaced, we lose information about local history and skills. Harrison’s book adds to a growing library on language death, but his is a particularly compelling one – made all the more graphic through many photographs and there are even some examples of sign languages that are used in some cultures.

Back to Dhivehi (and Welsh)

Obviously Dhivehi is nowhere near endangered status – after all, it is the official language of a Sovereign State (the Maldives). That said, is is not a commercially viable language for most translation companies because not enough people outside the Maldives want to translate to or from it. So the question I asked was what role does the localization industry play in supporting the many thousands of languages, like Dhivehi, that lie in-between commercial/global and endangered. As a natural born Welshman, my own country’s language once fell (and arguably still does fall) into this category so perhaps this is personal.

As a given languages becomes less and less popular it moves towards the tipping point – the point at which it becomes impossible to find people willing to base a career in translating back and fore between it and the more commercial languages. Vendors, especially the larger ones, unwittingly play a role here - they are the connectors between clients with need and the ever-decreasing number of translators to that language.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not ascribing a noble nature to the language service business. I certainly don’t think the big-thinkers at the larger vendors (myself included, I guess) spend much time thinking about this type of thing… but perhaps we should.