USA: an unexpected treasure chamber in the translation market
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Nowadays, people tend to be online always. Smartphones, other portable devices, and fast-growing internet systems (like recent-developed Starlink or 5g) allow users to "stay connected" worldwide 24/7. Today, over half of the world's population (4.32 billion) are active internet users, predicted to grow to 6.54 billion billion by 2025. At the same time, mobile traffic is one of the most significant parts of all internet traffic - it is 55%.
Despite high-speed technology development, different regions have different internet penetration numbers and numbers of users. Based on 2023 data, the top three countries by internet users are:
- China (1.05 billion)
- India (836 million)
- USA (311 million)
At the same time, the level of internet penetration differs significantly among the countries on this list.
- USA - 91.8%
- China - 74.9%
- India - 50.4%
As you can see, the USA is a country that has one of the biggest numbers of internet users and, in comparison with world leaders, the highest level of internet spreading. Based on all these facts and the USA economic level (the USA is the largest economy worldwide), we decided to overview this country in detail in the context of localization. Let's go!
The USA language diversity
One might assume that the US market can be served by offering products in English. However, this is not the case. In 2021, the total population in the United States was 332 million people, and besides English at home, people are speaking in:
- Spanish - 41 million;
- Chinese - 3.5 million;
- Tagalog - 1,7 million;
- Vietnamese - 1.5 million;
- Arabic - 1.3 million;
- find top 10 languages besides English below
In total, approximately 21% of Americans are bilingual, and this percentage has been continuously rising over the years. If 30 years ago, only 1 person out of 10 was bilingual, in 2019, it was 1 of 5.
The US has no official language (some states list English as official), and Americans use more than 350 languages.
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Note: Remember the difference between the English language for different regions. The spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc., for the UK, Australia, the USA, and other English-language countries can differ much— for example, color-colour, gray-grey, etc.
The USA internet usage trends (web and mobile)
In the era of internationalization and globalization, companies prioritize expanding into new markets rather than confining themselves to local ones. So, what should you know about the American market before diving into it?
- Mobile on top. In 2023, there were 383.4 million active mobile connections (113.1% of the population.)
- 72.5 of the entire USA are social media users.
- 15% of the adults in the USA are smartphone-only. That means they have no broadband connection at home.
- 218.8% million people in the USA are internet shoppers, and their average yearly spending is over $5,000.
Also, smartphones have become an essential part of life for Americans. On average, they spend more than 5 hours daily on their mobile device and check it almost 100 times!
If we compare the desktop and mobile traffic - we can see that most purchases are made from the desktop, but one out of three people each week use a smartphone to buy something - this figure is higher than average worldwide.
The United States of America is an excellent market for entering because you can find a variety of audiences and easily touch them thanks to excellent internet development. From our side, Lingohub is always here to support you.
How can Lingohub help to reach the USA?
- CAT tools for the speed and quality-up. Lingohub offers various features - style guide, term base, quality checks, translation history, etc.- to simplify the translation. The new-designed Editor with additional views for focused work and bulk actions guarantees an effective process with all needed things at hand.
- Fallback languages. For instance, American English, one of the most common languages in the USA, has particularities compared with the UK or Australia. You can use the fallback language feature to fill the empty segments by the existing translation. Such a tool will avoid the situation when your language version has empty spaces without the text.
- Prefill. Never start a translation from scratch. Easy fill all the empty segments from existing language, translation memory, or machine translation.
Conclusion
The US market is diverse and easily accessible through high internet penetration. For instance, there are over 40 million Spanish speakers. So, the USA could be a treasure chamber for businesses where each can find their own audience.
We at Lingohub are always ready to support your business with covering the new requirements by providing our translation management solution. Our team will gladly share more information with you - so read more about our features, schedule the quick demo call, or try Lingohub itself for 14 days for free.