Communities

East Anglia is extremely diverse with nearly 200 different languages spoken. INTRAN produces geographical statistics to show demand for different languages based on requests to both our interpreting and translation service providers. These statistics are a very valuable tool if you want to do some outreach work and target people whose first language is not English or who are deaf. If you want to know more about demand for interpreting in your local area, click here.

Before doing any outreach work, key questions you may want to ask yourself are:

• Who are our local communities?
• What language do they speak?
• What are their characteristics (are there families, young people, older people, gender breakdown)?
• Are there any specific reasons why people live here? Are there recent communities or more established ones?
• Where do people live? What networks of information do they have?
• What level of education are they likely to have received in their home country? Is the level of literacy high?

For example, did you know that the biggest ethnic community in Norwich comes from Bangladesh? 98% of the local residents speak Sylheti, an oral dialect that has no written form. If you want to consult the Bengali community, the best way to communicate with non-English speakers is by speaking rather than writing!

Norfolk County Council has several reports about Norfolk population statistics available for download here.