infundibulum

Since I’ve started paying more attention to translation on the web, one country has started to stand out in terms of the sheer amount of translation: China. Deutsche Welle and BBC World Service and VOA News all make massive translation efforts, but it turns out that China’s national Xinhua news service does as well: China to standardize minority language translation system drives home the point:

According the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, More than 60 million people from 55 minority populations within China use more than 80 spoken languages and about 40 written languages.

China has about 300 minority language translation organizationswith part-time and full time staff of more than 100,000.

CRI Online has a list of forty-plus languages. (Looking at some of the content there doesn’t seem too impressive, however–the text on the Burmese page, for instance, is all images.)