Through the Cool Infographics blog I learned about two interesting infographics produced by PS Translation Services. The first is titled The Most Widely Spoken Languages in the World, but I think a better name would be “translation station.” The Most Widely Spoken Languages in the World is a train map of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Each track on the map represents one of twelve languages. Each station on each track indicates a country in which that language is widely spoken.

The second infographic from PS Translation Services is titled the Language Olympics. The Language Olympics features five rings. The rings represent Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania. Each of the rings is comprised of the languages spoken there. The infographic includes some additional information about the number of languages spoken at the Olympics and the demographics of visitors expected at the 2012 Olympic Games.

Applications for Education
These infographics (download for free) could make for interesting classroom display and discussion. Here’s a question to pose to your students looking at the Language Olympics infographic, do you think it’s important for athletes that speak different languages to try to understand each other? (A little background on that question, in the mid-late 90’s I competed in some international archery competitions. One the difficulties for me was trying to communicate during the scoring process with other archers and judges who did not speak English).