While organisations may want to invest in widely spoken language to ensure the highest reach possible, there may be situations when translating information for ethnic groups with a smaller population may have small reach but high impact, whereas translating for a bigger audience may have the potential for greater reach but may not have as much impact as similar information may already be available in that language.

There is no one size fits all approach, and important factors such as budget, purpose, and intended audience will impact your decisions.

Languages by region

If you are trying to get messages into specific regions, you may want to adapt the languages you are translating to reflect the diversity or ethnic community population of that region.

Below is a summary of languages spoken in some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s major centres. StatsNZ | Tatauranga Aotearoa provide breakdowns of the most common languages spoken in each region of the country on their website.

Languages by ethnicity

The ten most spoken languages by ethnic communities in Aotearoa New Zealand are listed below. These have been broken down by ethnicity (Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American, African and Continental European). This information can be helpful if you are wanting to translate information to reach specific ethnic communities.

This is data where individuals have self-identified as belonging to an ethnic group and does not necessarily mean there is a language barrier.

English language proficiency

StatsNZ data

Based on Census data, we can infer that at least 3% of people in Aotearoa New Zealand (or approximately 115,000 people) may need language assistance to access government services. The highest population requiring language assistance are Asian communities, where an estimated 11% (or 80,000 people) may require extra support.

This data is based on the number of people who did not tick ‘English’ as a language they spoke in the Census question “In which languages can you talk about a lot of everyday things.” We can only estimate the extent of the language gap, since this specific question may have been overlooked by those with written language difficulties, language barriers, or by those who skipped the question inadvertently. There may also people who can speak English conversationally, but in some circumstances may need an interpreter or translation to aid their communication or understanding.

English Proficiency Index data

It may also be helpful to check the English Proficiency Index to get a sense of which populations are likely to have better levels of English, this may help you to determine the priority languages of people that will need information delivered in their languages. For example, while Afrikaans is a language spoken widely by ethnic communities in Aotearoa New Zealand, the English proficiency rate of South Africa is high, whereas a language like Gujarati (where there are comparatively fewer speakers), may be higher on the priority list of languages due to the lower English proficiency ranking of people from India.

Highest English language proficiency rates

Lowest English language proficiency rates

Combined ethnic community population and English proficiency data

The Ministry for Ethnic Communities has combined the ethnicity data from the 2018 Census with the English Proficiency Index data set to provide a list of priority ethnicities who are likely to benefit from translations.

Each country was given a value as a percentage based on their English proficiency ranking. The initial rankings from the English Proficiency Index data were from 1-110 (where 1 has the highest proficiency). The total number of people within that ethnic population (drawn from the MEC data dashboard) was weighted by the proficiency ranking to arrive at the list below.

Most translated languages by the DIA Translation Service

Below is a list of the most frequently translated languages carried out by DIA Translation Service over 2020-2022. This covers translation projects from English for both public sector agencies and private sector clients.