What is a language codes and what do you use a language code for? In the language world, there is a standard set of international codes used by linguists that has been set forth by the standard ISO 639 to define what language a document has been translated into. This standard consists of six supplimentary standards consisting of language codes made up of two, three and four letters in addition to guidelines on how they are to be used. In most cases, the codes derive from the language’s native name it is referred to by speakers of the language, but this is not always the case as can be seen in the list of language abbreviations at the end of this article.
Upon translating a document, common practice is to add the appropriate abbreviation to the translated document. By doing this, a general level of organisation can be achieved when carrying out translation projects, especially with regard to complex multilingual translation projects. To present an example of this, upon opening a folder containing the delivery files of a project where a document has been translated into several languages, you might expect the following file names or something along these lines:
- filename_ar.docx (translated into Arabic)
- filename_de.docx (translated into German)
- filename_fr.docx (translated into French)
- filename_hi.docx (translated into Hindi)
Please keep in mind that the naming of files may be much more complex within your organization depending on the configuration management strategy is use. If you are unfamiliar with the word configuration management, please see my article on configuration management on this blog.
In order to present a short introduction into this system of language codes, here is a list of the 2-letter abbreviation system according to ISO 639-1 with added spirit for the holidays, wishing all readers of this blog all the best for this holiday season. Please note that this list of language codes is by no means complete, although it includes some of the most common languages. In each column, you will see the language code, the language and that little something for the holiday season.
Code: Language: Natives call it: Holiday Translation:
en English English Merry Christmas
af Afrikaans Afrikaans Gesëende Kersfees
sq Albanian Shqip Gezur Krislinjden
ar Arabic Al arabiyah عيد ميلاد مجيد
bn Bengali Bangla শুভ বড়দিন
bg Bulgarian bălgarski ezik Честита Коледа
cs Czech čeština Vesele Vianoce
zh Chinese zhōngwén 圣诞快乐
da Danish Dansk Glædelig Jul
de German Deutsch Fröhliche Weihnachten
el Greek Ellīniká Καλά Χριστούγεννα
eo Esperanto Esperanto Gajan Kristnaskon
et Estonian eesti keel Rõõmsaid Jõule
fi Finnish suomi Hyvää Joulua
fr French français Joyeux Noël
hr Croatian hrvatski Sretan Božić
hu Hungarian magyar Boldog Karácsonyt
hi Hindi Hindi शुभ क्रिसमस
is Icelandic Íslenska Gleðileg jól
it Italian Italiano Buon Natale
ja Japanese Nihongo メリークリスマス
lv Latvian latviešu Priecīgus Ziemassvētkus
lt Lithuanian lietuvių Linksmų Kalėdų
mk Macedonian makedonski jazik Sreken Bozik
mt Maltese Malti Il-Milied it-Tajjeb
nl Dutch Nederlands Vrolijk kerstfeest
no Norwegian Norsk Gledelig Jul
pt Portugese português Feliz Natal
pl Polish język polski Wesolych Swiat
ro Romanian română Sărbători fericite
ru Russian russkij yazyk C Рождеством Христовым
sk Slovak slovenský jazyk Vesele Vianoce
sl Slovenian slovenski jezik Vesel božič
es Spanish español Feliz Navidad
sv Swedish svenska God Jul
th Thai phasa thai สุขสันต์วันคริสต์มาส
tr Turkish Türkçe Mutlu Noeller
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