Europe
To which language should you translate to localize in Romania?
What we know from our community
Nestled among Slavic languages in Eastern Europe, Romanian is a Romance language from the same family as French or Spanish. The ancient territory now known as Romania was conquered by the Roman Empire and turned into a colony, which explains the presence of a language with strong Latin roots in the area. Over time, Romanian interacted with its neighboring languages and absorbed Slavic, Turkish, Hungarian, and German influences.
With around 24 million native speakers worldwide, Romanian is the official language of Romania and the Republic of Moldova. The latter was once part of Romania until it was lost during World War 2, eventually establishing its independence.
Romanian is a phonetic language with a few special characters, known as “diactrice”– ă, î, â, ș, ț– that have distinct pronunciations. The language features five cases and three genders: feminine, masculine, and neutral. However, the neutral gender is limited to nouns, posing a continuous challenge to Romanian linguists and translators in the quest for gender-neutral or inclusive language.
In the present day, the Romanian language dynamically evolves in response to globalization, cultural exports, and a large diaspora spread around Europe and North America. Young people adopt internet slang and sprinkle their speech with English words which often find their way into the dictionary in their original form. However, Romanian doesn’t have stand-alone definite articles, so declensions signal that a noun has changed form. So, we end up with English words with Romanian endings like “feedback-feedbackul.” Pretty cool, right?
Carmen,
Senior Copywriter & Creative Director
Introduction
Language
Official language
Romanian
Minority languages
Hungarian, Romani, Ukrainian, German, Greek, Russian, Turkish, Tatar, Serbian, Slovak, Bulgarian, Croatian
T-index
0.33%
T-Index ranks countries according to their potential for online sales.
Most studied languages
English (31%), French (17%), German (7%), Italian (7%)
English
High proficiency (EF) – 17 of 112 countries/regions in the world- 15/35 position in Europe.
Demography
Capital: Bucarest
Currency: Leu romeno
Population: 19,12 m
Population density: 84/km2
Economy
GDP: 284.09 billion USD (2021)
GDP per capita: 14,858.2 USD (2021)
Exports: $73 billion (2020)
Statistics
Internet users: 88% penetration, 16.79 million
Unemployment rate: 5.6% (2021)
Urbanisation: 54% (2018)
Literacy: 99% (2021)
Conventions
Numbering system
Arabic numerals with comma as decimal separator and space as thousands separator
Date format: dd-mm-yyyy
Time: 24h time system
Country code: 0040
Language data sources: Worldatlas/Britannica//EF/Wikipedia; Demography data sources: IMF/Worldometers; Conventions data source: Wikipedia; Economy data sources: WTO/OEC/CIA/Esomar/Datareportal; Statistics data sources: Datareportal/WorldBank/UN/UNESCO/CEIC/IMF/Culturalatlas/Commisceoglobal
Facts and data
Economy
Imports
$90.2 billion (2020). Motor vehicles; parts and accessories (8701 to 8705) ($3.85B), Packaged Medicaments ($3.17B), Cars ($2.49B), Crude Petroleum ($2.18B), and Insulated Wire ($1.76B), importing mostly from Germany ($17.8B), Italy ($7.81B), Hungary ($6.28B), China ($5.76B), and Poland ($5.58B).
Financial inclusion factors (over 15 years of age)
• 58% have an account with a financial institution
• 12% have a credit card
• 3.0% have a mobile money account
• 19% make online purchases
Ease of doing business
It is easy to conduct business (rated 73.3 out of 100) ranked 15th out of 24 European and central Asian countries, ranked 55th out of 190 countries worldwide (2022, World Bank)
Global Innovation Index
Ranked 31st out of 39 European countries, 49th out of 132 worldwide.
The Global Innovation Index captures the innovation
ecosystem performance of 132 economies and tracks the most recent global innovation trends.
Exports
$73 billion (2019). Motor vehicles; parts and accessories (8701 to 8705) ($6.07B), Cars ($5.75B), Insulated Wire ($3.67B), Electrical Control Boards ($2.33B), and Rubber Tires ($1.6B), exporting mostly to Germany ($15.9B), Italy ($7.45B), France ($4.65B), Hungary ($3.24B), and Bulgaria ($2.59B).
Main local online stores
olx.ro, emag.ro and aliexpress.com. Other top retail sites include amazon.com and altex.ro.
Economic freedom
‘Moderately free’ (rated 67.1 out of 100) ranked 28th out of 43 European countries ranked 47th out of 186 countries worldwide (2022, Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal)
Economy data sources: WTO/OEC/CIA/Esomar/Datareportal
Service imports (2017)
Source: OEC
Most complex products by PCI
Product Complexity Index measures the knowledge intensity of a product by considering the knowledge intensity of its exporters
Source: OEC
Service export (2017)
Source: OEC
Most specialised products by RCA Index
Specialisation is measured using Revealed Comparative Advantage, an index that takes the ratio between Romania observed and expected exports in each product
Source: OEC
Export Opportunities by Relatedness
Relatedness measures the distance between a country's current exports and each product, the barchart show only products that Romania is not specialized in
Source: OEC
T-index
Reach most of the online purchasing power
T-Index ranks countries according to their potential for online sales. It estimates the market share of each country in relation to global e-commerce.
Try it nowMedia
Media language
Romanian, English
Information channels
Romania has one of the most dynamic media markets in southeastern Europe. A handful of conglomerates dominate the industry. TV is the medium of choice, with commercial stations Pro TV and Antenna 1 being the leading outlets. TVR is the public broadcaster. There is a competitive pay TV sector, via cable and satellite. Romania is yet to complete the switch to digital terrestrial TV (DTT). There are more than 100 private radios. Public Radio Romania operates national, regional and local stations. US-based Freedom House says the private media sector is dominated by influential businessmen who have their own political agendas.
The press
Adevarul – daily
Click! – tabloid daily
Libertatea – tabloid daily
Evenimentul Zilei – daily
Jurnalul National – daily
Romania Libera – daily
Capital – business weekly
Nine O’Clock – English-language daily
Television
TVR – public, national and local networks
Antena 1 – commercial
Pro TV – commercial
Prima TV – commercial
Kanal D – commercial
Antena 3 – commercial, news
Romania TV – commercial
Radio
Radio Romania – public, national and regional networks and Radio Romania International
Europa FM – commercial
Radio ZU – commercial
Kiss FM – commercial
Pro FM – commercial
Radio 21 – commercial
News agency
Agerpres – state-run news agency, English-language pages
Gandul.info – news site
HotNews.ro – news site
Media data source: BBC
Internet Data
Internet users
88% penetration, 16.79 million
Share of web traffic by device
56.40% mobile phones, 42.53% computers (laptops and desktops), 1.06% tablet devices, others 0.01%
Median speed of mobile Internet connection
33.76 mbps
Median speed of fixed Internet connection
124.36 mbps
Mobile connection as a percentage of total population: 143.7%
Percentage of mobile connections that are broadband (3G-5G): 82.4%
Most popular web search engines
Google (97.75%), Bing (1.07%),Yahoo (0.89%), Duckduckgo (0.16%), Ecosia (0.05%) Yandex Ru (0.03%)
Most used social media
Facebook (93.54%), Instagram (1.84%), Pinterest (1.17%), Twitter (1.02%), YouTube (2.16%), Reddit (0.12%)
Internet data sources: Datareportal/Statcounter
Social statistics
Life expectancy
74 yrs (2020)
Healthcare Expenditure
5.74% of GDP (2019)
Average age of the population
43.2 yrs
Gender
Men and women are equal before the law. Women Women have equal standing in the workplace; there are equal numbers of women and men with university degrees in the workforce. A number of women work in the areas of healthcare, teaching, and specific industries (i.e., textiles) as well as in social security sectors. However, there are fewer in business, politics, and in higher-level positions.
Ethnicity:
Ethnic origins hold a lot of weight in judging others. There is historical resentment toward the Hungarian, Jewish and Gypsy minorities that is not felt toward Ukrainians, Germans, Turkish Muslims or Tartars who are less numerous. Russians are feared: Russian mafia actions are replacing memories of former Soviet Communists’ rule. Italians are given a warm welcome and intercultural relations are even better than those with the French, who have always enjoyed a certain prestige.
Religion
Although Catholicism is the most adhered to religion in Italy (about 85% of Italians claim to belong to the Roman Catholic Church), religious freedom is protected under law by the constitution of 1947 (notThe Orthodox religion is rather tolerant and allows priests to marry. Approximately 90% of Romanians are Orthodox, but, particularly in villages, a smaller number of them are actually practicing. Recently, a number of neo-Protestant sects have made a breakthrough.
Class:
Communist leaders have now been replaced by people with “new money” (i.e., business men, politicians and high-ranking civil servants). This elite group, which includes a number of people who became rich in the Communist era, is envied, loathed and feared by the vast majority, who accuses them of acquiring their wealth through fraud and by taking advantage of networks established under the totalitarian regime. Every day, the press exposes the crimes that have gone unpunished by the corrupt justice system. There are very few who make up the middle class and the “entrepreneurs” who took over just after the change in regime still hold their privileged positions. There is a kind of general resignation on the part of the people that appears to prevent them from taking the initiative to change this situation.
Social statistics sources: WorldBank/UN/UNESCO/CEIC/IMF
The Data Factbook is a work in progress project. Our community is helping us to fill it up always with new and updated data. Your contribution is precious. If you want to help us, please write your advices at imminent@translated.com
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