In the context of globalization, multilingual support has become an essential part of international websites and products. However, font selection is a crucial aspect that is often overlooked, affecting not only the reading experience but also the first impression of the brand. This article delves into the cultural adaptation techniques of multilingual fonts and analyzes the key factors to consider when choosing a multilingual font, hoping to help everyone.
Multilingual support is already an integral part of an internationally oriented website/product. Among them, the choice of font is often overlooked, but extremely critical – it directly affects the user’s reading experience and first impression of the brand.
“Multilingual fonts” are actually fonts specifically designed for multilingual display, and they are well compatible with various languages and writing systems, ensuring that pages look clear and beautiful in different regions, and that users around the world have a higher reading comfort when browsing the website.
However, it’s important to note that not all fonts support all languages. Failure to use appropriate fonts can result in text appearing garbled or preventing certain characters and special accents from being displayed correctly, impacting the user experience.
At the same time, as more and more domestic products and software go global, there will be more people who speak different languages to browse and use our website and products; When users visit a website and see text content displayed in their native language, they feel familiar and build trust that allows users to stay on the site for more time and increase interactivity, leading to higher conversion rates.
The following cited research content sources and Research report by Common Sense Advisory
CSA Research conducted a survey of 8,709 global consumers in 29 countries across Europe, Asia, North America, and South America and found that 76% of online shoppers tend to purchase items that are informed in their native language.
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Research also shows that nationality increases the demand for locally-language content in online transactions. Germany, in particular, has the highest percentage of shoppers who shop only on local-language websites, at 57%. A sample of six other countries also said that more than 50% shared this preference. Other important findings include:
- 65% prefer content in their own language, even if it is of poor quality
- 67% tolerate mixing languages on websites
- 73% want product reviews to be in their language
- 76% prefer products that provide information in their own language
- 66% use online machine translation
- 40% of people don’t buy from websites in other languages
Therefore, choosing a suitable multilingual font minimizes misunderstandings and improves the overall user experience; Next, you can learn about the considerations for choosing multilingual fonts and how we choose fonts when localizing websites in different countries.
Key factors to consider when choosing a multilingual font
When choosing a multilingual, there are several key factors to consider to ensure that the font we choose can be used effectively; The right font goes beyond just displaying text—it bridges cultural and linguistic differences, making your website’s content easy to understand and appealing to audiences in different languages worldwide.
- Multilingual support: Ensure that the fonts you choose cover all languages supported by your website, or if one font doesn’t cover all languages, you can choose multiple fonts to add to your website’s font set.
- Font family diversity: Choose fonts with as much variety as possible – regular, bold, italics, etc., not only for aesthetics but also for readability and emphasis across languages. Some text may require a larger font weight to display clearly, while others may be better suited for thinner fonts. A diverse font family keeps the text content of your pages more readable and effective.
- Brand Consistency: Regardless of the language, choose fonts that match the brand tone of your website or product to maintain brand consistency in global markets.
- Font compatibility: Each font should be compatible with major browsers and operating systems worldwide.
- Technical support: Font formats, embedding methods and other technical citations will also affect the performance of the website and the correct display of fonts, and appropriate technical methods need to be considered to ensure the effectiveness of multilingual fonts.
- Font licensing: Remember that you need to consider the legal availability of fonts when choosing fonts, and you can choose to pay for fonts or free fonts as needed, and I recommend them here Google Fonts It is currently one of the largest and most popular font libraries in the world, with thousands of open source free fonts, and supports hundreds of languages, all of which are multi-platform compatible and easy to integrate with technology, making them suitable for building multilingual and multicultural international websites.
When doing a localized website, we can choose a font to support multiple languages, or we can choose a font for each language individually, which way to choose depends on the requirements and standards of experience design, we hope to achieve a more ultimate reading experience for local users, so we have done more in-depth research on the fonts of each language, and choose to configure fonts that are more in line with the characteristics of local culture for each language.
Case 1: Localized website – Thailand station
In Thai fonts, there is a main distinction between ringed and ringless fonts, a distinction similar to the use of serif and sans-serif fonts in the Latin alphabet.
- Circular fonts: Closed parts of Thai characters (e.g., ก, ด, ถ) retain intact circular or circular structures, and the ends of strokes may have decorative curves; The overall style is traditional, formal and elegant; It is mostly suitable for official documents, printed books, newspapers, educational materials and other scenarios with a traditional cultural atmosphere. For beginners in Thai, the ring design makes the letters easier to distinguish.
- Ringless fonts: There is no circular ring structure at the top of the letter or at the end of the stroke, and the lines are more concise, straight, and geometric; The overall style is modern, simple and technological; It is mostly suitable for web pages, mobile interfaces, advertising posters, brand design and other scenarios with modern design trends.
Combining font characteristics, cultural characteristics, website/product tonality, and local user feedback in Thailand, we finally chose Kanit, a more modern ringless font, to apply to the Thailand website.
Case 2: Localized website – Japan site
There are dozens of font styles in Japanese, but like English, only Two are dominant. In Japanese, Serif is called “Mincho” (Mingcho), and the Ming Dynasty font family has the aesthetic and functional characteristics of serif fonts, while Sans-Serif is called “Gothic” (Gosic), and the Gothic font family has the aesthetic and functional characteristics of sans-serif Latin fonts.
- Ming Dynasty style: originated in the printing technique of the Ming Dynasty in China, and there are often decorative small horizontal lines or dots at the end of the strokes, imitating the traditional calligraphy style; Its design is traditional, elegant and classical, with the charm of handwritten strokes, and the decorative “serif” makes the font look more complex; It is mostly suitable for official documents, academic papers, printed materials, traditional brands and other scenarios that need to convey cultural atmosphere.
- Gothic: Clean lines and uniform thickness, influenced by modern Western font designs like Helvetica, emphasizing functionality and modernity; The font structure is neat, modern, and concise, and visually more eye-catching and clear; It is mostly suitable for web pages, mobile interfaces, advertising posters, young brands and other scenarios that need to convey vitality, modern simplicity and high legibility requirements.
Based on the characteristics of Japanese fonts, we initially narrowed down two Gothic fonts, M PLUS 2 and Noto Sans JP:
- M PLUS 2: Developed by Japanese designer Koji Morishita, it is part of the M+ FONTS collection. The “M” stands for “minimal” and the “+” means “beyond minimalism.” M PLUS 2 is the second glyph design in the M+ series, focusing on simplicity and modernity while retaining a certain softness.
- Noto Sans JP: Developed in collaboration between Google and Adobe, released in 2014 with a focus on cross-platform compatibility and Unicode overlay, it is part of the Noto font family, designed specifically for the Japanese language, with the goal of “No Tofu”, which is to solve the problem of missing characters. The design has simple and geometric lines, uniform stroke thickness, and no sans-serifs at all, presenting a modern and professional atonal design.
Both fonts are designed to be modern and minimalist, and M PLUS 2 is more personal and artistic in comparison to the subtle design differences, making it suitable for small creative studios or independent blogs. Noto Sans JP’s kanji and kana designs are clean and visually more “tough”, suitable for international websites with a strong sense of technology.
Combining font characteristics, cultural characteristics, website/product tonality, and local user feedback, we finally chose Noto Sans JP, which is relatively conservative in font design and more neutral, to apply it to the Japanese website.
There are two other aspects to pay attention to when using Japanese fonts:
- Noto Sans JP has approximately 44,806 glyphs, so the font files are large, so if you use the method of embedding the download font pack, you need to consider the impact on the loading speed of your website.
- Due to the compact structure and concentrated center of gravity of Japanese fonts, it is easy to cause visual oppression or crowding, affecting readability. Therefore, when using Noto Sans JP, you can increase the line height appropriately, generally recommended to set it to 1.6~1.8 times the font size, depending on the specific layout needs and display equipment.
These are just a few of the two languages we have been researching in our localization website, and there will be more detailed content in other languages in the future.
At the end of the article, I would like to tell you that in cross-cultural design, fonts are not only carriers of information, but also links between different cultural backgrounds around the world. Behind every writing system lies a unique cultural code. True multilingual design is never a simple character replacement, but a retranslation of visual language, respect and understanding of different languages and writing systems. Of course, multilingual fonts are only one part of cross-cultural design, and if you want to create a truly global design, it is far more than the presentation of language and text, but also covers multiple dimensions such as color, graphic images, typography habits, cultural taboos, and interaction methods. Every detail may affect the user’s understanding and feelings. Understanding cultural differences and respecting users’ backgrounds is the key to doing a good job in global products.
