Brazil

To which language should you translate to localize in Brazil?

“Brazil is a country of continental dimensions and as such home for a variety of ethnic groups, customs, and dialects. Portuguese is its official language, even though there are several Amerindian languages still spoken by its indigenous population. Brazil is by far the world’s largest Portuguese-speaking nation and the only one in the Americas. The Portuguese spoken in Brazil varies from one region to another and it is also notably different from the one spoken in Portugal – the accent, meaning of certain words and expressions, verbal conjugation, use of pronouns, etc. It can actually be challenging for a Brazilian person to understand someone from Portugal! The differences in written language are fewer but still quite evident. Therefore, if you want your text or audio to come across nicely and sound native in Brazil, you must translate it into the Brazilian variant of the Portuguese language.”

Official language

Portuguese (93.2%; 196.78 mln)

Actual languages

Portuguese (93.2%; 196.78 mln), German (0.5%; 1.05 mln), Italian (0.3%; 633k), Japanese (0.2%; 422k), Quechua (0.1%, 211k), other (5.7%; 12.03 mln).

What the top 150 best localized websites in the world do in Brazil

(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)

• 114/150 localize by translating into Portuguese
• 13/150 localize by translating into Brazilian Portuguese
• 3/150 localize by translating into both Portuguese and Spanish
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Brazilian Portuguese, French and Simplified Chinese
• 1/150 localizes by translating into both Brazilian Portuguese and Brazilian Sign Language
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Portuguese, Spanish, German, Japanese, Russian, French and Italian
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Portuguese, Spanish, German, Japanese, Russian, French, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean
• 1/150 localizes by translating into Portuguese, Spanish, German, Japanese, Russian, French, Italian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Bahasa Indonesia, Turkish, Romanian, Thai, Ukrainian, Polish and Hungarian