In our time of digital era, we use different typefaces, fonts and letters in everyday use, as means of communication. We – humans, read more letters simultaneously, what leads to the fact that we are starting to “see” the words before we read them because we recognize letters as a group that has been given a certain meaning.
Due to the fact that our senses collaborate to feed information about our surrounding environment into the brain, which means they are used to working together, we tend to “hear” the words as we read them. This is the reason why specially designed typography can make written letters sound louder than spoken words.
In terms of close communities, it functions perfectly, but what is with global communication?
We define verbal language as the combination of sentences, phrases and words, while on the other hand visual aspect refers to the sentences and meanings produced by the visual appearance of image and text. But what happens when the meaning or context is not clear enough? What kind of solution needs to be designed to help people in overcoming daily language barriers to make the world a real global village?
Good ideas may also be prevented due to communication obstacles. Do we think enough about the lack of information coming from the other side of the globe, caused by communication problems?
On the other hand, it is nowadays common to have people in our surroundings which have problems with saying their opinion or getting accepted just because of their lack of ways of expressing themselves. We are used to diversity but there are still many bars in working together perfectly.
In order to improve everyday collaboration with experts from other areas, companies are trying to invent a way of a device that could instantly translate languages in real-time conversation. Thinking in that direction can help us solve many problems, but we also have to consider the people with hearing loss as well as older people with lack of knowledge of technology.
Furthermore overcoming language barriers means the protection of languages that otherwise had no online footprint, which leads to preserving information of every nation and every language by bringing hundreds of thousands of characters to the digital age.
Experts are already struggling with the topic of overcoming language barriers and creating “typefaces for the world”. But there are still so many languages that are not digitalized and can not be used as means of typography in graphic design.
With over 4000 languages in the world, a typeface that encompasses fonts for over 800 different languages is still not the best solution, knowing that many languages that are not Latin based don’t have appropriate fonts that work well on the screen.
That is why this problem is a global problem, requiring our full attention in order to interconnect different parts of the world, in the hope that future generations can collaborate without language barriers.
Not only that we need to help establish a better way of communicating with people from different areas, but we also have to protect their languages from distinction.
Many text generators compare two languages showing us the beauty of different languages. But in order to ease digital communication across global platforms, we need to protect language heritage with typefaces that allow carrying their native symbols in digital forms.
The problems mentioned above are the ones I want to deal with during my research.
Sources:
https://www.vignette.global/inventive-ways-tackle-language-barriers/ ;
https://developers.googleblog.com/2014/11/i-can-get-another-if-i-break-it.html?utm_campaign=noto-urdu-1114&utm_source=jabran.me ;
https://www.commarts.com/columns/global-typography ;
https://www.dezeen.com/2017/03/04/waverly-labs-pilot-earpiece-translates-languages-real-time-design-products-technology-mobile-world-congress/ ;
https://typesoftype.com/about ;
Books:
Fred Edmund Jandt (2010): “An introduction to intercultural communication: identities in a global community”
Stephanie D. H. Evergreen (2014): “Presenting data effectively: communicating your findings for maximum impact”
Charlotte Rivers (2005): “Type specific: designing custom fonts for function and identity”
Linda Varner Beamer (2008): “Intercultural communication in the global workplace”
Guo-Ming Chen (1998): “Foundations of intercultural communication”
