More than seven thousand languages are spoken today, yet almost all of them belong to a few dozen families. Knowing which group a language comes from tells a translator what to expect: its grammar, its sounds, even the way its speakers structure an argument.
The big families
Indo-European covers English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi and Russian — the working languages of most international business. Sino-Tibetan gives us Mandarin and Cantonese, where tone changes meaning entirely. Afro-Asiatic includes Arabic and Hebrew, written right to left, while the Niger-Congo family holds Swahili, Yoruba and hundreds more across Africa.
A good translation respects the family a language grew up in — its logic, its rhythm and its untranslatable corners.
Why it matters for your project
German compounds stretch sentences, Chinese drops verb tenses, Arabic reshapes layouts. A translator who understands the group anticipates these shifts instead of fighting them, which is exactly how our teams are organised: by language family, not just by language.
Planning to launch in a new market? Get a quote and we will match your documents with native specialists from the right group.
Head of Linguistics, Lexiport Translations
