To which language should you translate to localize in Greece?

“Despite the fact that Greek is nowadays spoken by somewhat fewer people than in the distant times when it served as a lingua franca for a wide continuum of peoples and places, knowing the language remains in many respects a great asset with a payoff that extends far beyond what relates to living and working in modern Greece and Cyprus. This is so both because it makes much easier to understand many technical terms and ordinary words of a Greek origin that have become an integral part of other languages spoken in Europe and around the globe and because it provides access to the original text of a massive collection of writings that have long become known for their fascinating culture and far-reaching intellectual depth. Although this does not mean that knowing modern Greek suffices for a professional translation of texts that might span as far in time and place as the late Bronze Age, a wide-ranging antiquity, the medieval times of the Byzantine Empire and its early modern aftermaths, and the ritual language still in use by the Greek Orthodox and other Christian Churches, it certainly helps in case one is interested in mastering these versions of the language as well, as is even more the case for people who follow the opposite route, namely, from ancient to middle and modern Greek. And to add further to its current presence, Greek is an official language of the European Union; a recognized minority language in Albania, Armenia, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine; and de facto spoken both by other Hellenophone populations and members of an ever-present Greek diaspora formed through various waves of migration in every corner of the earth, and by a considerable portion of other nationals in the Balkans who regularly cross Greece’s northern border in order to work, study, do some shopping or simply enjoy their time in Greece. 

In present-day Greece things are luckily much simpler in what has to do with language. The vast majority of permanent residents use the standardized version of modern Greek taught at schools on an everyday basis, which stands in some contrast to Cyprus, where the regional variant prevails in informal everyday speech. As for regional dialects of the language in present-day Greece, some of them are still in currency in informal speech between their community members and are not always readily accessible to thirds, as is the case with the Cretan dialect, with the many Cypriots living in Greece, and with the Pontic dialect of emigrant Greeks with a descent from modern north-central Turkey. Other than these though, most of the smaller regional dialects or dialects of emigrant Greeks nowadays retain few and enclaved numbers of users and are on the verge of extinction. Among them one finds the Constantinople and Cappadocian dialects of displaced Anatolian Greeks, the Tsakonian dialect in eastern Peloponnese, a centuries-long domesticated Albanian dialect known as Arvanite, and, further in the north, other domesticated Aromanian dialects of old pastoral clans, the language of northern Greek Jews known as Ladino, and small dialects that draw from Slavic and Bulgarian. Furthermore, the north-east includes an officially acknowledged ‘Muslim minority’ with mostly Turk-speaking members and has a considerable Roma population who speak a regional version of the Romani language; whereas a small number of old displaced Armenian emigrants have been long preserving their own language as well. 

This is still not where the linguistic landscape in Greece comes to a close. English literacy is highly common for people aged lower than 40, since most Greeks supplement their formal schooling while in K-12 and afterwards with long-year private tutor lessons of English and, quite often, of an additional European language. The main immigrant group comes from Albania and other than that present-day immigrants in Greece mostly come from parts of West and South Asia, Southeastern, Eastern and Caucasian Europe, and Africa.”

Kostantinos Bizas, D.Phil. in Political Thought & Conceptual History

Official language
Greek (97.4%; 10.13 mln)

Other languages
Greek (97.4%; 10.13 mln), Turkish (0.9%; 0.09 mln), Macedonian (0.4%; 0.04 mln), Bulgarian (0.3%; 0.03 mln), Armenian (0.2%; 0.02 mln), Albanian (0.1%; 0.01 mln), other (0.7%; 0.07 mln)

English proficiency
High proficiency (EF) – 20 out of 123 countries/regions in the world- 17/37 position in Europe.

(Top 150 websites listed in the Global by Design ranking – published annually by Byte Level Research, this report provides a list of globally localized websites, showcasing best practices and emerging trends in their globalization)

• 91/150 localize by translating into Greek
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Greek, Greek Sign Language, Romany (Northern Greece) and Romany (Southern Greece)
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Greek, French and Simplified Chinese
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Greek, French and German
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese and Russian
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Spanish, French, Italian, German and Simplified Chinese
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditions Chinese, Korean and Japanese
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditions Chinese, Japanese, Bahasa Indonesia, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Thai and Arabic

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