A Microsoft program manager pursuing his master’s thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Shahar Ronen, worked in collaboration with fellow researchers from MIT, Harvard University, and Northeastern University in the United States and from Aix-Marseille University in France to create worldwide maps of how multilingual people transmit information and ideas.
They were able to map out three major global language translation networks based on current online information flows from bilingual tweeters, book translations, and multilingual Wikipedia edits. The result: a new functional method for identifying the best languages for spreading ideas far and wide.
S. RONEN ET AL., PNAS EARLY EDITION (2014)Many books are translated into and out of languages such as English, German, and Russian,
but Arabic has fewer translations relative to its many speakers.
(Arrows between circles represent translations; the size of a language’s circle is proportional to the number of people who speak it.)
The language translation map that emerged confirms that English is the obvious choice as second or third language for non-English speakers, but more interestingly, it suggests that for spreading ideas through writing, it would be more advantageous to choose Spanish over Chinese. The map also established “a halo of intermediate hubs” with French, German, and Russian serving the same function at a different scale. (
Visualizations of the Global Language Network)
Ronen, as lead author of the study, says that the language translation networks have the potential of guiding governments and other language communities that would like to to change their international role. He observes: “If I want my national language to be more prominent, then I should invest in translating more documents, encouraging more people to tweet in their national language. On the other side, if I want our ideas to spread, we should pick a second language that’s very well connected.”
Read Michael Erard’s “Want to influence the world? Map reveals the best languages to speak” in ScienceMag.org now!
