Need???

o There aremorethan 7,100languages in the world,with Chinese,Spanish, andEnglish being the mostwidelyspoken.

o Even if,75% ofthe world’spopulationdoesn’t speak a wordofEnglish 57.7% ofdata onthe Internetand 50% oftechnicaland scientificperiodicalsare inEnglish.

– English – 56.9%, Russian 5.2% Spanish 4.6% French 4.2% All other languages are used in less than 0.1% of websites accordingto W3TechssurveyFebruary1, 2023.

o But, 20 years ago, English accounts for more than 80% of all online content and it declined to 55% today.

o As more countries are coming online, the amount of content in other languages is also increasing.

– Russians today have more than 61% and Germany and Japan have more than 85% of internet access.

– It's notable that online use of English increased just by 281 percent, Spanish 743 percent, Chinese 1,277 percent, Russian, 1,826 percent, and Arabic being highest by 2,501 percent from theyear 2001 to 2011.

– Also, a 2009 UNESCO report from 1996 to 2008, found a decline in English websites percentage on the internet from 75 percent in 1998 to 45 percent in 2005, and on the other side, non-English web pagesare rapidly expanding.

– According to a 2000 study, the international auxiliary language Esperanto ranked 40 out of all languages insearchenginequeries, also ranking 27out ofall languagesthat rely ontheLatin.

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Data showingdemand and scarcityof websites in different languages o The data presentedaboveclearlyshowsthe demandfornon-Englishlanguage contentis increasingand thatdirectlyaffectsthe demand fortypefaces.Butunfortunately,we don’t have ample typefacestosufficethisdemand. o Let’s take an accountofthe Googlefontslibrarytounderstandthe scarcityofmultilingual typefaces.

– In Google fontslibrary out oftotal1482fontfamilieswefind-

– 1404 font families that support Latin and 1035 font families that support Latin extended. Similarly,

– 386 Vietnamese,

– 356 Cyrillic,

– 119Greek,

– 54 Devnagari,

– 52Japanese,

– 44 Hebrew,

– 42 Arabic,

– 31 Korean,

– 31 Thai,

– 27Khmer,

– 24 Telugu,

– 15Tamil,

– 13 Chinese,

– 12 Gujarati,

– 9 Bengali,

– 9 Kannada,

– 8 Malayalam,

– 8 Gurumukhi,

– 6 Sinhala,

– 4 Oriya,

– 3 Myanmar, o Accordingtothe datapresented above,onlyLatin(1404),Vietnamese (386), Cyrillic(356),and Greek(119) have enough Typefacesthatare morethan 100fontfamilies, whereasall othershave lessthan that.Chinese, which iswidely spoken,has only 13 fontfamilies,while Myanmar and Tibetan have onlythreefontfamiliesarchivedin thegooglefontslibrary. o So, we cansayreflectingondesignpracticeinmultilingualcontextsisnot aluxury; “itis anecessityinafield.”

– and only 3 Tibetans..

– Data showing scarcityof non-Latinfontsin the Google fontslibrary.

Some of the challenges lie in matching the typographic characters of one script with another, adaptingthescriptsto typographicsystemsandthe limitationsofcertainkindsof media.

What are your favourite, or most challenging, aspects of working with multilingual/multi-scripttype?

“The most challenging and enchanting aspects of working with multi-script type design are the translation and balance in design. I need to learn about different scripts. How is it written and what do different styles mean in their cultural context? Multi-script design is not an exception in China but a must-have. Many English words are being used in Chinese daily life. For example, Wi-Fi, NBA, CPU, 4G/5G, App… For a Chinese type designer, working well with the Latin design in a Chinese font should be a prerequisite, let alone with otherscripts.

- LiZhiqian DesignerandResearcher. (3type,Shanghai)

1.Complexlanguages-Languages witha lotsof charactersand complicatedformscanbe trickyto workwith.

“Telugu and Kannada scripts are similar in their written structure, but there are many small differences that can easily become lost in the details. For example, Kannada has a head stroke almost like Devanagari that connects every character. Telugu characters don’t connect; the head stroke is in the form of a tick mark. Their origins are from the same script, but they eventually evolved into two different languages and later into differentscripts.” saysRamakrishnaSaiteja,Indian type designer

2. Colonisation- The legacy of colonialism—with its imposed viewpoint equating Western culture with desirable modernity and superiority and degrading local cultures as backward and inferior—plays a part in inhibiting global scriptdevelopment.`

“Type design has a Eurocentric problem that it’s been slow to shed. We should be listening to divergent opinions, experimenting, and inviting more people from different regions and languages into the field as active collaborators.”says KsenyaSamarskaya(Samarskaya& Partners,Brooklyn)

3. Religion- In the slow development of type systems for certain languages religion plays a part.; for instance, Hebrewwasconfinedto biblicalandTalmudic scholarshipfortwo thousandyears

“Hebrew script has been employed for a variety of languages spoken by the Jewish diaspora, most notably by Yiddish and Ladino. As a result, its various typographic styles carry a strong associative connection to a specific use: either religious and scholarly or contemporary secular Hebrew, or another language altogether such as Yiddish. A designer of Hebrew type needs to be mindful of and sensitive to the cultural baggage that each style carries.”says Misha Beletsky (Typophiles,NewYork)

4. Education- To inform their practice, young designers need reliable sources of information, but the existing curriculumonlycoversoneortwo scripts.Multiculturalismishinderedby the inabilityto learnnewscripts.

“Education in type design, including at the University of Reading’s MA Typeface Design course, is Latin centric. We are not taught to design in Indian script. There might be a small workshop, but in formal education, we are onlytaught to designinEnglish,” saysPooja Saxena,a MATDgraduate.