Speakers of Asia’s Sino-Tibetan languages account for a large portion of consumers in the language industry, as Asia-Pacific occupies the position of fastest-growing market area and North America (with its large Asian immigrant population) maintains its position as largest market area overall. While the focus of language services is often on common Sino-Tibetan languages such as Mandarin Chinese, smaller languages — specifically those in the Tibeto-Burman subgroup — are often left behind.
What Are Tibeto-Burman Languages?
Tibeto-Burman languages are part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, which is the world’s second-largest language group with approximately 400 languages and 1.4 billion speakers worldwide. Geographically covering Asia’s Eastern, Southeastern, and Southern countries, the language family is divided into two branches: Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman.
Sinitic languages are largely defined as those whose meaning is derived from pictographs and tones, including all Chinese languages (the Latin word Sinae refers to China). Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Taiwanese, and Shanghainese are all Sinitic languages.
Tibeto-Burman languages, on the other hand, share lexical roots with their surrounding neighbors in Asia, as seen in their similar vocabularies that collectively trace back to Proto-Tibeto-Burman. Tibeto-Burman languages include Burmese, Tibetan, Meitei (Manipuri), Karen, and Bodo.
Services in Tibeto-Burman Languages
While a large portion of language service providers (LSPs) within the United States (US) offer services for Sinitic languages, an overwhelming majority do not have the capability to support Tibeto-Burman languages. For example, Transperfect — the number one LSP based in the US — offers seven Sinitic languages but only three Tibeto-Burman languages. This proves that even the most financially equipped LSP with the greatest availability of resources is only able to provide a small number of languages within this vast language family.
Similarly, while there are a considerable number of certified linguists for more commonly used Sinitic languages, there is a shortage of those whose language pairs include a Tibeto-Burman language. To make matters worse, hundreds of lesser-known Tibeto-Burman languages come from remote mountain regions, which makes them incredibly difficult to properly document for public access.
To overcome these challenges, the language industry needs to invest in linguistic research supporting the documentation of lesser-known Sino-Tibetan languages, as well as create more linguistically diverse training programs for emerging professionals. This will allow LSPs to bridge the gap for one of the largest language families by population and better serve consumers across the globe.
