This combination of languages opens any document or product up to a wide range of potential users. Turning to the strangely ever-useful CIA World Factbook, some plain economic facts bring this home all too clearly. Germany alone is the world’s 5th largest economy with an estimated 2008 GDP of US$ 2.8 trillion, more than a quarter greater than the UK’s equivalent output. France, Italy and Spain are 8th, 10th and 12th respectively on the same scale.

The numbers are even more staggering, with a combined GDP of about that of the United States, once you add in some of the other countries and regions where these are primary native languages – Austria, Mexico, Argentina, French-speaking Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, Venezuela, the list goes on and on. There are also large numbers of people around the world who speak one of the FIGS languages as a foreign or second language.

As the FIGS languages use the Roman alphabet, they are relatively straightforward to use in a range of typefaces and on the web. This, combined with their large audience, makes these languages a popular choice especially when considering translation for a west European market. Many companies and organisations wanting to expand their reach are making use of FIGS translation and localisation services for their products, websites and documents.

After all, whether you are trying to win someone’s business or convince them of your point of view, there is no substitute for a stylish, well written translation in their native language. Everyone should give a fig about that!

Take, for example, Catalonia. Laws enforced after the fall of the Franco regime (which itself followed a bloody and divisive civil war) require that Spanish language be taught in state schools for 3 hours a week maximum – the same as English and other foreign languages. More than nine out of 10 people in the region can now speak Catalonian.

This wide variation from region to region in Spain is particularly important to bear in mind with Spanish translation, in terms of both language and culture. For example, tapas (small dishes of food including chorizo and Serrano ham) and Cava (local champagne) are two things that come to mind when you think of Spain, along with the less palatable bull-fighting. Yet of these ‘Spanish’ delicacies, Cava is only produced in Catalonia, and tapas is a Basque tradition.

When it comes to business translation, one rule is key: “Speak your readers’ language”. That is a language that changes from person to person, region to region – not just country to country. Nowhere in the world is this more apparent than in the “cohesive nation” of Espaňa (and that’s before you even consider the variants found within Latin American countries). However, for now, division within the country lies largely forgotten. As stated by Madrid-based political analyst David Mathieson in The Guardian: “Football has united Spain”.