The economic activities of the language need the support of the language industry. The foreign learners who study in China should know that the language industry is the industry that regards language as the main operation target and make profits by taking advantages of the language. In order to know more about the language industry, we should first know something about the types and economic contribution of the language industry.
The Chinese language resources development and application center was built in December of 2008. According to the research by this center, language industry includes eight types. The first one that the students who learn Mandarin in China should know is the language education and language test. They become the most traditional industry. The “New Oriental” is a typical example.
The second type should be the language translation, which is a prosperous language industry. When foreigners come to learn Chinese in China, they should know that Chinese language translation has a large scale. It occupies a relatively large market share in the world. Another important type is the language art. Just like other cultural industries, the language arts such as the calligraphy, comic dialogues, films and televisions and broadcast can produce economic benefits and form language industry.
Besides, the language publishing is also an important language industry even though it is hard to define which kinds of publishing belong to language publishing. But learners who study Chinese should know that dictionary is definitely the language publishing. A good dictionary will gain many benefits to the publishing companies.
Recently, many publishing companies started to publish the electronic books. It brings great challenge and opportunity to the publishing industry in China. We can imagine that the students are needless to bring the printed books to Chinese language school to study in the future three or five years. The relevant language publishing industry is the main concern of the national Chinese language committee now.
The language recovery is also an essential content of language industry that the foreigners who are learning Mandarin Chinese may not familiar with. It focuses on the language recovery of the deaf and mute people, the children with slow language development ability and the people with harelip. All of them greatly need the language recovery. Therefore, there is a great need in this aspect.
Language creation is very popular, especially in the fields of advertizing planning and trademark design. There are also some other creative industries that are related to language. For example, to combine the ancient Chinese characters with jewelry design. Another one that the students who learn in Mandarin learning courses should know is the language engineering. The computer language processing can’t work without language engineering. It is also has great potential benefits.
The last but not least type that the students who study Mandarin Chinese should know is the language exhibition. We can exhibit the language products and language technology. Therefore, it will become a kind of language industry. All above eight aspects are just some examples. We need further research to summarize the total types of language industry.
About the production of the language industry, there is no specific data can show. The Switzerland economist F. Grin pointed out that the economic contribution of the language in Switzerland gross national product takes a percentage of 10%. There are four languages are spoken in Switzerland. Many students who learn Mandarin Chinese know that the common people in Switzerland master three languages. Therefore, the economic development has close relationship with the language industry.
In China, we can’t also figure out the economic contribution of language industry to our economy. Of course, when you learn to speak Chinese in China, you should know that language economy has the direct one and the indirect one. The language is spread, so the economic benefit is scattered in different industries. When our economy is developed into a certain degree, we will build the language economy science and figure out the economic contribution.
The eight basic types of language industry are essential for people to know. It will be beneficial to know more about the language industry. About the economic contribution of the language industry in China, it remains unknown for now. But it will be figured out in the near future.