Europe
What language should you translate to localize in the Czech Republic?
What we know from our community
Czech is historically also known as Bohemian (lingua Bohemica). It is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. Spoken by over 10 million people, it serves as the official language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of high mutual intelligibility. Czech is a fusional language with a rich system of morphology and relatively flexible word order. Its vocabulary has been extensively influenced by Greek, Latin, German and lately English.
Czechia is a homeland to the world-known lager beer formula and production process, which is allegedly the country largest contribution to the world’s culture, although the recipe was developed by a German brew master hired for work in Pilsen. Only slightly lesser of such worldly impact would be the inventions and discoveries of the effective-for-storage sugar cubes, eye-contact lenses and nylon stockings. Czechs also stand behind such discoveries and inventions as laws of genetics, lightning rod, blood groups, nanofiber, artificial veins, the so-called boiling glass (i.e. glass suitable for the production of both test tubes and teapots), and polarography, the invention of Josef Heyrovsky who was granted the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for it.
Others would include a ship’s propeller, gas street lights (spread wide across Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, the system in Prague actually still working today). Tomas Bata from East Bohemia did to shoes what Ford did to cars – introduced factory mass production to radically cheapen manufacturing costs and made shoes affordable ‘for everyone’ (which was not a norm in the early 1920’s, especially in rural Central Europe). And Karel Capek, a world-known writer of the Modern Age in the 1st half of 20th century, created the word ‘robot’ which has been used world-wide ever since he’d introduced it in his R.U.R. theatre play in 1920 and will be used even more frequently in the time to come.
Prague, the country’s capital city of approx. 1 million people, would for centuries be one of European’s highest acclaimed centers of knowledge, education, religious reformation, and culture. The Prague Castle is allegedly the world’s largest still inhabited castle, larger than England’s Windsor.
Czech
Čeština je historicky známá také jako český jazyk (lingua Bohemica). Je to západoslovanský jazyk česko-slovenské skupiny, psaný latinkou. Mluví jím více než 10 milionů lidí a slouží jako úřední jazyk České republiky. Čeština je úzce příbuzná se slovenštinou, a to až do míry vysoké vzájemné srozumitelnosti. Čeština je fúzní jazyk s bohatým morfologickým systémem a poměrně pružným pořádkem slov. Její slovní zásoba byla značně ovlivněna řečtinou, latinou, němčinou a v poslední době i angličtinou.
Česko je vlastí světoznámé receptury a výrobního postupu ležáckého piva, které je údajně největším přínosem země pro světovou kulturu, ačkoli recepturu vyvinul německý sládek najatý na práci v Plzni. Jen o něco menší světový dopad by měly vynálezy a objevy účinných skladovacích kostek cukru, kontaktních čoček a nylonových punčoch. Češi stojí i za takovými objevy a vynálezy, jako jsou zákony genetiky, hromosvod, krevní skupiny, nanovlákno, umělé žíly, tzv. varné sklo (tj. sklo vhodné pro výrobu zkumavek i konvic), a polarografie, vynález Josefa Heyrovského, který za něj získal Nobelovu cenu za chemii.
K dalším by patřil lodní šroub, plynové pouliční osvětlení (v 18. a 19. století se rozšířilo po celé Evropě, systém v Praze vlastně funguje dodnes). Tomáš Baťa z východních Čech udělal s obuví to, co Ford s automobily – zavedl tovární velkovýrobu, která radikálně zlevnila výrobní náklady a učinila obuv dostupnou “pro každého” (což na počátku 20. let 20. století nebylo normou, zejména na středoevropském venkově). A Karel Čapek, světoznámý spisovatel moderní doby 1. poloviny 20. století, vytvořil slovo “robot”, které se od té doby, co ho v roce 1920 zavedl ve své divadelní hře R.U.R., používá po celém světě a v budoucnu se bude používat ještě častěji.
Praha, hlavní město země s přibližně 1 milionem obyvatel, bude po staletí jedním z nejvýše uznávaných evropských center vzdělanosti, vzdělanosti, náboženské reformace a kultury. Pražský hrad je údajně největším dosud obývaným hradem na světě, větším než anglický Windsor.
Ivan Remias
Introduction
Language
Official language
Czech 96%
T-index
0.23%
T-Index ranks countries according to their potential for online sales.
Other languages
Slovak 1.6%. other languages 2.4%
English
High proficiency (EF) – 23 of 112 countries/regions in the world- 19/35 position in Europe.
Demography
Capital: Prague
Currency: Czech koruna
Population: 10,51 m (2021)
Population density: 139/km2
Economy
GDP: 281.78 billion USD (2020)
GDP per capita: 26,821.2 USD (2020)
Exports: $190 billion (2020)
Statistics
Internet users: 90% penetration, 99.66 million
Unemployment rate: 2.8% (2020)
Urbanisation: 73.92% (2020)
Literacy: 99% (2020)
Conventions
Numbering system
Arabic numerals and comma as decimal separator, space as thousands separator
Date format: yyyy-mm-dd / dd-mm-yyyy
Time: 24h time system
Country code: 00420
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
$165 billion (2020). Broadcasting Equipment ($10.2B), Motor vehicles; parts and accessories (8701 to 8705) ($8.64B), Office Machine Parts ($7.97B), Computers ($5.12B), and Packaged Medicaments ($4.2B), importing mostly from Germany ($42.2B), China ($24.3B), Poland ($15.1B), Slovakia ($8.74B), and Netherlands ($7.41B).
Financial inclusion factors (over 15 years of age)
• 81% have an account with a financial institution
• 25% have a credit card
• 66% make online purchases
Ease of doing business
It is easy to conduct business (rated 76.3 out of 100) ranked 226th out of 44 OECD and high-income countries ranked 41st out of 190 countries worldwide (2020, World Bank).
Exports
$190 billion (2020). Cars ($20.8B), Motor vehicles; parts and accessories (8701 to 8705) ($12.6B), Computers ($11.4B), Broadcasting Equipment ($10.2B), and Office Machine Parts ($4.79B), exporting mostly to Germany ($60.6B), Slovakia ($14.2B), Poland ($11.7B), France ($8.89B), and Austria ($7.71B).
Main local online stores
Zalando, Amazon and Saxo Boghandel, eBay, H&M, Bilka, CDON.com, Coop.dk, Elgiganten and DSB.dk.
Economic freedom
‘Mostly free’ (rated 71 out of 100) ranked 15th out of 45 European countries, ranked 21st out of 186 countries worldwide (2022, Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal).
Global Innovation Index
Ranked 19th out of 39 European countries, 30th out of 132 worldwide.
The Global Innovation Index captures the innovation
ecosystem performance of 132 economies and tracks the most recent global innovation trends.
Economy data sources: WTO/OEC/CIA/Esomar/Datareportal
Service Imports (2017)
Source: OEC
Service Exports (2017)
Source: OEC
Most complex product by PCI
Product Complexity Index measures the knowledge intensity of a product by considering the knowledge intensity of its exporters
Source: OEC
Most specialised products by RCA Index
Specialisation is measured using Revealed Comparative Advantage, an index that takes the ratio between the Czech Republic 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 the Czech Republic is not specialized in
Source: OEC
E commerce payment methods in Czech Republic, split by value
Source: J.P.Morgan
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:
Danish, English
Information channels
A lively commercial broadcasting sector provides stiff competition for public service outlets. Public Ceska Televize (CT) operates several networks, including 24-hour news channel CT24. Public radio, Cesky Rozhlas (CRo), runs national and local stations. The leading private TV channels Nova and Prima broadcast nationally. There are scores of privately-owned radio stations, including Impuls and Frekvence 1. The media operate relatively freely and without undue government constraints, says Freedom House in its 2019 country report. But it says there are concerns about the concentration of media ownership among wealthy business figures and the “potential impact of this on journalists’ ability to investigate commercial interests”.
The press
Lidove Noviny – daily
Mlada Fronta Dnes – daily
Pravo – daily
Blesk – tabloid daily
Hospodarske noviny (Economic News) – financial daily
Respekt – weekly
Television
Czech TV – public
CT 24 – public, news
TV Nova – private
Prima – private
Radio
Czech Radio – public; runs national/regional networks and external service Radio Prague
Frekvence 1 – private, national
Radio Impuls – private, national
Evropa 2 – private, national
News agency
CTK – national news agency
Prague Daily Monitor – news portal, in English
Media data source: BBC
Internet Data
Internet users
90% penetration, 99.66 million
Share of web traffic by device
35.98% mobile phones, 62.63% computers (laptops and desktops), 1.35% tablet devices, others 0.04%
Median speed of mobile Internet connection
43.18 Mbps
Median speed of fixed Internet connection
47.04 Mbps
Mobile connection as a percentage of total population: 138.6%
Percentage of mobile connections that are broadband (3G-5G): 87.7%
Most popular web search engines
Google (83.19%), Seznam (11.93%), Bing (4.02%), Yahoo (0.61%), DuckduckGo (0.39%), Yandex (0.32%)
Most used social media
Facebook (77.35%), Pinterest (10.36%), Instagram (5.48%), Twitter (3.76%), YouTube (1.72%), Tumblr (0.53%)
Internet data sources: Datareportal/Statcounter
Social statistics
Life expectancy
78 yrs (2020)
Average age of the population
43.3 yrs (2020)
Healthcare expenditure
7.83% of GDP
Glass Ceiling Index
53.2 out 100, ranked 25th out of 29 countries.
The glass-ceiling index measures the environment for working women combining data on higher education, labor-force participation, pay, child-care costs, maternity and paternity rights, business-school applications, and representation in senior jobs.
Ethnicity
The Czech Republic is among the most “ethnically homogeneous” countries in Europe (some 95% of the population are ethnic Czechs or “Moravians”).
Gender
Women are considered the “weaker gender” and are treated with particular respect. They command certain privileges in most workplaces and other situations. (This does not mean pay equality. Women are generally still paid less than men).
Graduates (tertiary education)
Among 25-64 year-olds in the Czech Republic, the most common tertiary qualification is a master’s degree, held by 17% of adults compared to 6% for a bachelor’s degree. This is in contrast to most OECD countries where the majority of tertiary-educated adults hold a bachelor’s degree. Overall, the share of 25-64 year-old tertiary-educated adults in the Czech Republic is 14 percentage points below the OECD average (24% compared to 39%). Although tertiary attainment is higher among 25-34 year-olds (33%), it remains below the OECD average.
Religion
The Czechs are one of the most religiously uninvolved people on the planet, a fact supported by all available statistics. Despite the fact that almost half of the population admit that they belong to some faith (namely the Catholic Church), most do not attend church services or follow any religious practices. At the same time, more than 40% of Czechs declare that they are “non-religious” or “atheist”. With only a very few exceptions, this issue has no significance at all in the workplace.
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
Languages research
Dialects spoken in the Czech Republic
Legend
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German
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Bohemian Dialects
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Silesian Dialects
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Czech Polac Dialect
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Slovak Moravian Dialects
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Central Moravian Dialects
The language research that you will find in the maps published in this section is a work in progress. Our community is helping us to fill it up with always new and updated data. Your contribution is precious. If you want to help us, please write to imminent.factbook@translated.com
Photo credit: Mikolas Voborsky, Unsplash