Happy International Mother Language Day!

In celebration of the hundreds of unique languages humans use to communicate, UNESCO has proclaimed a holiday: International Mother Language Day.

21 February 2012, today, we celebrate the diversity of our native languages. The first Mother Language Day fell in 2000 as part of a noble effort “to promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world”. Through focusing on creating an atmosphere of respect for individual languages, the organization hopes to promote educational endeavors and inclusion while reducing discrimination.

Native languages are key to expressing cultural identity and self expression. The loss of a language results in the loss a people, from their history and literature to their advances in medicine and science. The promotion of multilingualism allows individuals to maintain their cultural identity as well as relate to people of different cultures. It’s also essential for us in the localization and translation industry!

Today, international corporations have realized the benefits of localizing their materials. Microsoft Windows is celebrating today by “announcing support for even more languages for Windows 7 and Office 2010: Dari (Afghanistan), Mongolian (Cyrillic – Mongolia), Turkmen (Turkmenistan) and Valencian (Spain) and for Office 2010 specifically – the previously mentioned languages plus Maltese (Malta).”

e2f is proud to localize and translate into French and share our beautiful mother language with the world!