A new study by language learning marketplace Preply has revealed the apps that are the most and least language inclusive on a mission to make the internet more inclusive and accessible.

The analysis looked at 50 of the most used IOS apps globally, including Tinder, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon and more, and uncovered which offer the most and least translation options.

Key findings:

• Unsurprisingly, English is the language offered the most often, supported on 97% of the most popular apps.
• None of the worlds most popular apps offers the Welsh language as an option.
• But Spanish, one of the most common languages spoken worldwide and America's most spoken foreign language, is only supported on 65% of the most popular apps.
• ​​The availability in other languages is slightly lower: French is only available on 63% of the apps, while Italian and Portuguese are supported by 61% and 54%of the popular apps.
• Local languages like Tamil and Urdu are only available on 9% of the most popular apps worldwide.
• Icelandic and Kannada are the languages supported the least, only supported by 7% of the apps.

Hinge, Hulu, Sky Go, and Discord are among the apps that don’t support Welsh. 

The study revealed that the least language friendly apps supporting just one language (English) include Sky Go, Hinge, Tesco Clubcard, Discord, and Hulu.

Shockingly, NONE  of these apps—popular in major industries such as e-commerce, dating and entertainment services — are available to the 883,300 Welsh speakers of the UK.

In fact, language experts at Preply found that there have been staggering increases in searches for “English to Welsh App” (450%), “English to Welsh translation services” (125%),  in the last 12 months.

Inclusive customer experience is the future. If tech companies want to communicate with 90% of the world’s internet users (a few than a quarter of them are native English speakers), they had better start covering more languages, and serving the Welsh-speaking population could be a great start.

Which apps are the most language inclusive? 

YouTube is revealed as the most language inclusive app covering 73 languages, followed by Signal with 71, Google Meet at 67, Spotify at 58, and Gmail landing 5th with 55.

 

Inclusivity is more important than ever

Brands should strongly consider providing multilingual customer experiences. The internet may connect users, but languages connect humans.