So you need to get your English website translated into German, Japanese, Spanish and Korean. Your globalization team comes back with a document that says: en into de, jp, ko, es What new language is that? Well, it’s not really a language, but rather internationally accepted abbreviations for world languages. “En” represents English, while “de” represents German and so on. And now to your next question: How did they get “de” from the word “German”? The word in German for the German language is Deutsch — hence the “de” abbreviation.

1. What are ISO Language Codes
This article was originally published on the Acclaro blog.
Category: "Spot" on Language
So you need to get your English website translated into German, Japanese, Spanish
and Korean. Your globalization team comes back with a document that says:
en into de, jp, ko, es
What new language is that? Well, it’s not really a language, but rather internationally
accepted abbreviations for world languages. “En” represents English, while “de”
represents German and so on. And now to your next question: How did they get “de”
from the word “German”? The word in German for the German language is Deutsch —
hence the “de” abbreviation.
These language abbreviations are standards created by the International Organization
for Standardization (ISO). You may have already heard of ISO film speed, which
measures the speed of color negative film (and now digital camera settings as well)
and ISO 900, a set of standards for quality management systems.
Founded in 1947 and based in Switzerland, ISO is comprised of the national standards
institutes of 159 countries. They have created over 18,000 international standards and
one of the most commonly used standards in the language/translation industry is ISO
639. The language standards have a variety of permeations, but the two letter
abbreviations are the most common.
If you’re managing a translation or localization project at your job, want to work in the
localization industry or you just want to get ISO 639 savvy, take a look at the actual
code tables.
Once you get those abbreviations down, then you’ll want to learn the difference
between “fr_ca” and “_fr”. But that lesson will have to wait for a future blog. Stay
tuned so you can read in “en” the ongoing story of language abbreviations from “aa”
to “zu”.
Page 1: What Are ISO Language Codes? Copyright © Acclaro 2012

2. About Acclaro: Acclaro is an international translation and localization company that
helps the world’s leading brands succeed across cultures. We translate websites,
marketing campaigns, documents and software to give clients an authentic voice in
key language markets.
North America: 1-866-468-5106 Worldwide: +1-914-468-0222
www.acclaro.com sales@acclaro.com
Page 2: What Are ISO Language Codes? Copyright © Acclaro 2012