The languages in most demand for translation/interpreting in the Devon County Council area for 2016/17 have been:
- Polish
- Mandarin/Cantonese
- Arabic
- Bengali
- Lithuanian
- Romanian
- Russian
- Sorani Kurdish
- Turkish
- Vietnamese
- Bulgarian
- Amharic/Tigrinya*
- Farsi
- Dari
- Oromo
However, demand for interpreting could reflect a large volume of conversations with one person or family, not necessarily a large number of people. Sometimes we need to write to or speak to family members in other countries so the list doesn’t always reflect people living here.
*there has been an increase in these languages due to the arrival of asylum seeking children.
The picture in schools is a little different. Polish, Romanian and Arabic remain the ‘top three’ and there are 226 pupils with 31 languages being supported through the Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service. This includes many European languages but also others (not already listed above) including Malayalam, Korean, Japanese, Punjabi, Thai, Hebrew, Nepalese and Urdu.
More information can be found on our Equality and Diversity web pages.