Asian Language Fonts for Website Localization and Global Marketing

One component of website localization that many marketers don’t think about is font support of other language characters. Although many fonts can support Latin alphabets, including the diacritical marks found in European languages, they are not all suitable for Asian languages. For example, the most popular Asian fonts (SimSun in China and MS Gothic or MS Mincho in Japan) are generally suitable for desktop viewing, but not all the characters display correctly on Android devices.

When you consider that 65% of global smartphone users employ Android OS, according to GWI, and that most of the growth is in Asian countries, it is more important than ever to think about how your fonts display on foreign language websites across devices. In 2013, the biggest increases in Android use were in South Korea (81%), China (75%), and Malaysia (75%) and these numbers are expected to continue to rise.

Given the need to reach as many potential customers as possible on multiple device types, what are the most effective Asian language fonts for website localization?

Asian Fonts for Website Localization

The latest development in Asian fonts is the partnership between Adobe and Google to create Noto Sans and Noto Sans CJK, an open-source font for Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean. Also known as Source Han Sans in the Adobe Typekit, the Noto Sans CJK font has more than 65,000 glyphs and seven weights for Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Prior to this collaboration, the best way to ensure that a font displayed correctly in Asian languages on Android devices was to use the Droid Sans fallback font with over 43,000 glyphs. Although this is a viable solution, Droid Sans is not always ideal because the fallback font may not have the consistent look you desire across the different language versions of your website. For global marketers who are concerned about maintaining a consistent brand identity, this can be a problem. Noto Sans which supports all major languages and Noto Sans CJK with special support for the three main Asian languages can help you achieve that desired consistency in your brand. Note that Droid Sans is not optimized for multiple regions, which limits the number of people who can read your site.

Other CJK font solutions exist, but most of them are not as robust in glyph support or only support one or two languages. Many of these also do not offer multiple weights, limiting the ways you can display the text on the screen. Most of these font options are also not free and can get quite costly, especially if you need to purchase multiple licenses to reach several different audiences. In fact, Adobe has said that Asian fonts can cost up to ten times more than Latin fonts.

Why Are Asian Fonts So Challenging?

For marketers who do not speak an Asian language, it may be difficult to comprehend the various challenges a programmer faces with website localization for certain countries. Unlike most Western languages that have a relatively small number of letters, Asian languages use ideograms (or characters) to represent syllables. For example, Chinese alone has thousands of characters, two types, and several regional dialects. Japanese is similar with thousands of characters and multiple characters sets such as Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana used in everyday text.

Many Asian websites also use a combination of Latin and Asian text, making it desirable to have fonts that match in style in multiple languages. Additionally, global marketers need fonts that look good both digitally (on any device) and in print materials, so they must be available for use in several different software programs.

Both the breadth and depth of Asian languages have made it difficult to provide an affordable comprehensive solution. In fact, it took Adobe and Google, two companies with some of the world’s most experienced software developers, five years to launch Noto sans CJK. This recent collaboration is a great leap forward for global marketers who operate in Asian countries.

*The article is selected from https://www.vengaglobal.com/blog/effective-asian-language-fonts-website-localization-global-marketing