Photo by Shawn Nystrand on Flickr
Toronto: A World-Class City
We’re diverse. We’re multicultural. We’re proud. We’re Toronto. Now we want to prove it to the rest of the world by hosting Expo 2025.
Today (Wednesday, October 26th), Yappn CEO Ed Karthaus will present his deposition to Toronto City Council on why Yappn (among many others) supports bidding for Expo 2025 with the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE). Toronto is regularly cited as one of the most diverse metropolitan cities in the world, as well as being one of the safest and most pleasant to live in. Yappn joins many influential leaders and organizations in and around the Greater Toronto Area in urging Toronto City Council to support a bid.
“Bringing Expo 2025 to Toronto is an opportunity our City should not pass up. We are truly a mosaic of religions, cultures and ethnicities, when combined gives Toronto a one of a kind standing on the world stage.”
– Ed Karthaus, CEO of Yappn Corp.
Related: UAE minister emphasizes the role language translation plays in promoting tolerance
Will this really work?
Habitat 67, originally created for Expo ’67, repurposed to house the ’76 Olympics athletes, now a housing complex
History demonstrates that Expos are very kind to Canada. Vancouver’s Expo ’86 was attended by 22 million visitors and was considered a major success, and Expo ’67 in Montreal was almost legendary,. The event was such a defining triumph for Montreal that their new major league baseball team formed two years later was named the Expos.
A City Council-authorized independent study conducted by PriceWaterhouse Coopers Arup and Lord Cultural Resources, funded entirely by private businessmen, found that Expo 2025 “could deliver a $4.37 billion boost to the national GDP and deliver $1.26 billion in tax revenue to all three levels of government,” well ahead of its projected costs.
Toronto is already one of the most linguistically diverse cities in North America as half of the GTA’s (Greater Toronto Area) population was born in countries other than Canada.
Source: Toronto Star 2016
Toronto: More Multilingual Than Thou
With Expo 2025, Toronto can expect 30 million visitors with an average rate of 225,000 per day. Expo 2025 will run from May 1-October 31, and, if Toronto’s bid for the event is ultimately successful, will serve to highlight what a world-class city we are and highlight our internationally famous multicultural and cosmopolitan reputation.
Whatever your language, we probably speak it here!
Toronto is home to over 140 languages and dialects (City of Toronto Diversity Facts)
Although English and French are our two official languages, French is only the 12th-most spoken language in the city (Geos Languages Plus Toronto)
Our multicultural neighbourhoods include Chinatown, Little Italy, Little India, Greektown, Koreatown, Little Portugal and many others. (No, we don’t have a Little France or Frenchtown. Yeah, it’s weird.)
Nearly a third of us speak a language other than English or French at home (Searching Toronto)
Portuguese is the sexiest language spoken in Toronto. Well, all right, that’s a matter of opinion, but one Torontonian makes a case for it being the sexiest of the Romance languages. Your mileage may vary, but hey, it can’t hurt!
Expo 2025 will provide Toronto with more jobs and business investment possibilities, and greater opportunities to learn how to communicate better than we already do. We can turn our eyes to Japan, whose government is aggressively investing in preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, including improving translation and interpretation services and signage for the expected influx of millions of international tourists and sports fans.
The bid for Expo 2025 is strongly supported by Ward 27 Toronto City Councilor Kristyn Wong-Tam, in Toronto Centre Rosedale. The depositions today will be given before the Executive Committee, composed of the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor, the Chairs of all Standing Committees, and four members‐at‐large who are members of Council. The decisions made at the Committee go forward to the next City Council meeting on November 9th.
Yappn Corp is an enhanced machine translation company offering translations for “Excuse me, how do I get to Expo 2025 and where can I find the best poutine?” in 67 different languages. For more information, or for some good poutine recommendations, please contact sales@yappn.com or call us at +1.905.763.3510 x246.
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Written by Nicole Chardenet, Sales Development Rep at Yappn.
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