Research has shown that English-language online retailers are targeting French speakers. The study by One Hour Translation looked at 4,000 “translation projects” on European ecommerce sites, and found that whilst English to French was the most common translation with 13.5%, that was followed by English to German on 13.4% and English to Dutch with a 11.3% share. Surprisingly, Dutch came above translations into Spanish or Italian. Yaron Kaufman from One Hour Translation said that it was “not surprising” since “Germany and France are the strongest economies in Continental Europe”. However, he did add that he believed Dutch coming a strong third demonstrated “the resilience of the economy and purchasing power of the Netherlands compared to other European countries”.
