There are around 6,602 million people on earth today - living, working, and communicating with those around us, existing as citizens of the modern world. Increasingly, we're also communicating with those who live far away via technology available through computers, mobile telephones and similar equipment. A key aspect of this communication is, of course, the use of language. The world has some 6,809 known languages, which are spoken in what amounts to around 200 countries across the world. 2,261 have writing systems (while others are just verbal). This is not a new phenomenon. Multilingualism in North America, for example, is usually talked about in terms of Spanish and English, or the languages of immigrant populations such as Poles or Chinese. However, we should try and remember that the Americas as a whole was a region with multiple dialects in full use, well before modern Asians or Europeans colonized the area. Over 300 languages were spoken, for instance, in pre-contact times in North America. Half of these (or thereabouts) have now become extinct. But that still leaves about 165 indigenous dialects alive and well in North America, and spoken at least occasionally. Multilingualism may not be a new invention, but certainly one product of modern times is the quantity of pan-global communication now taking place. We now need more translation services than ever before - to help us reach out and make contact with previously remote corners of the earth, and to help us provide business and social opportunities to those in developing nations who previously didn't have the chance to join the global community. However, not all languages are particularly easy to translate, and coping with that fact is one of the most tricky challenges faced by modern translation services. A good number of the world's dialects are used in the remoter regions, and the opportunity to learn these ways of communicating are limited for translation services professionals. Another reason some languages might prove to present a challenge for translation services is because they are descended from older ways of constructing grammar or vocabulary, which is quickly being replaced in towns and cities by modern styles of conversation. The constantly changing and dynamic nature of language is one of the most exciting and rewarding, but difficult, aspects of the work carried out by today's translation services professionals. In fact, as the speed of global communication increases rapidly to cope with our 24-hour working culture, the pace of change in language increases proportionally. For example, only around 300 languages are represented by on-line automatic translation software, and online dictionaries which seems to suggest that technology simply can't keep pace with the speed at which modern languages are changing, and their inherent complexity. In addition, languages are not uniformly distributed across the globe. Out of the 6,809 languages in the world, for instance, only 230 of those are spoken in Europe, and yet 2,197 of them are spoken in Asia. Greater focus is given to the languages in wealthier regions, with higher numbers of professionals working on translation services using these languages. For example, considering how widely the Indo-European languages are distributed across the earth, and their influence in international relations, you'd probably think that a high percentage of the world's languages belong to this family. It's not true, however - there are only about 200 Indo-European languages. In this time of globalized business, the earth is once again 'becoming flat'. At no time previously have so many of us from distant corners of the earth communicated so frequently and with such apparent ease making friends, establishing business relationships, and eventually forming trade patterns that change everybody's lives. Language is truly the currency of the modern world!
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