LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 810 million members across more than 200 countries and territories. With such a diverse global audience, LinkedIn aims to be inclusive and accessible to professionals worldwide. One way it achieves this is by supporting a wide range of interface languages that members can select based on their preferences.
What languages can you use on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn currently supports 24 languages across its desktop and mobile sites and apps:
- Arabic
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- English
- French
- German
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Malay
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Tagalog
- Thai
- Turkish
- Simplified Chinese
- Traditional Chinese
This range covers many of the most widely spoken languages globally, enabling professionals worldwide to access LinkedIn in their native or preferred tongues. The availability of multiple languages increases the inclusiveness of the platform.
How do you change the language on LinkedIn?
Changing your LinkedIn interface language is simple:
- Go to your LinkedIn profile settings
- Select “Language” under “Account preferences”
- Choose your desired language from the drop-down menu
- Click “Save” to confirm the language change
LinkedIn will then display in the language you’ve selected across web and mobile. Some things to note:
- Only your LinkedIn interface language will change, not the language of content posted by other members
- Automated translations may be used if content isn’t available in your chosen language
- Some parts of LinkedIn may still appear in English even when using another interface language
What languages are most used on LinkedIn?
The top 5 most used languages on LinkedIn are:
- English
- Spanish
- French
- Portuguese
- German
This ranking is based on LinkedIn’s own data on the language preferences configured across member profiles:
Language | Share of Members |
---|---|
English | 45% |
Spanish | 9% |
French | 6% |
Portuguese | 6% |
German | 5% |
As the platform originated in Silicon Valley, it is unsurprising that English remains the dominant language. But Spanish, French, Portuguese and German collectively account for over a quarter of members due to the broad international membership base.
Why does LinkedIn support multiple languages?
There are a few key reasons why multiple languages are supported on LinkedIn:
- Inclusiveness – Supporting different languages makes LinkedIn accessible to more professionals worldwide, enabling wider membership.
- User experience – Members can better understand and navigate LinkedIn in their own language.
- Engagement – Content published in local languages drives more engagement from native speakers.
- Recruitment – Companies can reach local talent more effectively by using the relevant language.
In summary, multiple languages allow LinkedIn to foster an inclusive professional community and give members, businesses and recruiters access to global talent pools.
How does LinkedIn handle content in different languages?
LinkedIn takes a few approaches to managing content across languages:
- Machine translation – Technology automatically translates some content into the viewer’s language where available.
- Publisher languages – Members can post content in any of LinkedIn’s supported languages.
- Language filters – Users can filter posts and search by language to see relevant content.
- Multilingual profiles – Profiles can include separate language sections for things like job titles, descriptions and skills.
This combination of automation, posting flexibility, filtering and customizable profile languages enables the seamless use of different tongues on the platform.
What are the benefits of supporting multiple languages on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn sees several advantages from its language diversity:
- Global reach – Access to more non-English-speaking users expands LinkedIn’s total addressable market.
- Localized experiences – Languages tailored specifically to each market improves user experience and satisfaction there.
- Talent acquisition – Companies can connect with qualified candidates anywhere in their own language.
- Increased usage – Interface languages drive more frequent site visits and engagement from members.
- Higher revenue – Supporting multiple monetizable languages leads to increased ad views and sales.
In summary, multilingual capabilities allow LinkedIn to drive user growth, engagement, recruiting and earnings worldwide.
What challenges does LinkedIn face in supporting many languages?
Offering 24 languages across web and apps creates some challenges for LinkedIn:
- Operating costs – Maintaining localized versions is expensive, requiring ongoing development, translation and support.
- Scalability – Growing new languages requires investing in machine translation and moderation for each one.
- Translation quality – Automated translations can be inaccurate without human review, yet manual reviews have high costs.
- Inconsistent experiences – Not all site areas are available in all languages, creating a patchwork effect.
- English requirements – Parts of the site still require knowledge of English terminology to use.
LinkedIn tries to balance these challenges with the benefits of multilingual accessibility but gaps remain in providing seamless experiences across languages.
Conclusion
Language support has become an imperative for global professional platforms like LinkedIn. By providing its interface in 24 tongues, LinkedIn aims to create an inclusive environment accessible to career-focused individuals worldwide. This multilingual approach helps LinkedIn expand its membership, boost user activity, and enable companies to connect with talent globally in localized ways. However, maintaining such broad language capabilities creates substantial costs and complexity for LinkedIn as it balances comprehensiveness with consistency across languages. Yet the benefits clearly outweigh the drawbacks, as language diversity has become a key enabler of LinkedIn’s value in an interconnected world.