Approximately 220 million people worldwide speak French, either as a first or second language. It is an important language in 45 countries and territories. This makes it the sixth largest language in the world, after Mandarin, English, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic. And French is still growing; if the current trend continues, the number of French-speaking people will grow to 750 million by 2050. How is that possible? The answer is simple, the population of French-speaking African countries is growing rapidly. We will have to see whether French will have experienced the same growth by 2050; if so, we will write another article about it.
There are also theories that predict something completely different. Despite the huge growth of French-speaking people in Africa, the language of the former coloniser is slowly but surely losing ground to local languages due to nationalist influences. This theory predicts that the number of French native speakers will actually decline. In any case, French, as a lingua franca (common communication language), will continue to play an important role in Africa for quote some time.
French belongs to the Romance languages and is the most spoken Gallo-Roman language. This language group originates from Latin. But there are also Celtic influences to be found in French. A great example is the somewhat awkward word for the number 80, ‘quatre-vingts’, which literally means ‘four twenties’. This is because in Celtic languages, numbers are counted in multiples of twenty. An example of the influence of (Lower) Franconian are the double negatives such as ‘ne … rien’ and ‘ne … pas’.
For translations into French, we use a French-speaking translator who lives and works in the relevant French-speaking area, an in-country translator. After all, translation also involves a cultural element. The target group must be addressed in the right way. All of these translators have also signed a confidentiality statement, which means your documents are always handled with strict confidentiality.