Written by Tim Kaney; Design, Website, and Marketing Specialist at The Geo Group Corporation.
Esperanto. Have you ever heard of this? I hadn’t until today. I was reading an article on a Google software program for translation and came across the word. At first I thought it was a character from an old black-and-white western TV series. Upon further investigation, I discovered something completely different. Esperanto is what is known as a planned or constructed language. Think along the lines of the Klingon language—something made up. Esperanto, however, has more noble roots and a far greater cause.
This language was created as a means to encourage understanding, cooperation, and peace between otherwise disparate nations and their peoples. A doctor by the name of L. L. Zamenhof from Bialystok, Poland, is credited with its creation toward the end of the 19th century. The Russian Empire and the numerous cultures present where Zamenhof grew up are thought to be the great instigators behind his creation of Esperanto. Through an efficient, easy-to-learn language, he was aspiring to bring all speakers of the language onto politically neutral and equal ground. Since it didn’t belong to one nation, he thought the language would develop through collective use and cooperation. Zamenhof also intended for Esperanto to become the second language of all people in the world, also know as an International Auxiliary Language. During the Second World War, however, Esperanto suffered setbacks as speakers of the language were persecuted in Nazi Germany, in Russia under Stalin’s rule, and in Hirohito’s Japan. Today, there is a resurgence of Esperanto and the number of speakers globally is on the rise.
Why is this important? While there are many philosophical and political reasons why Esperanto is important, some of which are considered controversial, let us consider its importance from a business and economic development standpoint. If you are taking your product or service global, you need to localize or translate it. It would get very costly to translate into every language in order to reach all possible consumers in the global market. Now, consider the possibility that you could translate into only one language and you could reach them all…wouldn’t you do it?
Before you go rushing off to get your materials translated into Esperanto, take a moment and look into just how many speakers of the language there are in the world. You will most likely find that there are not many when compared to the total populations in most major countries. While there are numerous Esperanto associations across the globe, there are not enough fluent speakers of the language to consider marketing to Esperantist consumers. If it weren’t for the Second World War, it is possible we would all be speaking Esperanto. Perhaps, in the future, we will.
Follow the links provided to learn more about this constructed language and to see where my own research led me.
http://192.220.96.203/efaq.html
http://www.esperanto.net/info/index_en.html
http://www.uea.org/info/angle/an_ghisdatigo.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Number_of_speakers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._L._Zamenhof
Tags: Esperanto, foreign language translation, formatting, multilingual proofreader, translation process
