There is anything from 3,000 to 6,000 different languages spoken across the world; Mandarin is the most popular, with approximately 882 million primary or first language speakers. Next is Spanish with 325 million speakers, and then English with 312 to 380 million.

Even if English is the third most popular language of the world, there are still over 300 languages spoken in London alone. London has a reputation as being the most cosmopolitan city in Europe - it is apparently more linguistically diverse than Paris or Tokyo - and only New York can really claim to be more cosmopolitan in terms of its internationalism. Added to this, is the complexity of dialect within the English language.

According to new research, England's new towns may be developing accents all of their own. Far from bolstering the spread of Estuary English and uniform pronunciations, it's noted, some new towns are now building their own distinctive ways of speaking. In Milton Keynes, in Buckinghamshire, teenagers are blending the previous generation's north London accent with the south Midlands pronunciation of the surrounding area, a trend that may be being followed in many of other new towns across the country.

Added to this diversity within the English language, are other influences from other nationalities within cities such as Arab, Asian, Caribbean and Chinese languages. In a recent awareness campaign for a health authority, for example, leaflets were written in 12 different languages for UK distribution.

Even within the commercial world, marketing directors tend to become far more tuned in to the idea of precision and target marketing. When budgets are tight, it's crucial to ensure that you reach the people you want with a finely-tuned message, which becomes far more preferable, and profitable, than the easier scattergun approach.

But it's not any easy task to communicate with any modern day audience, even if the majority of that audience can speak and understand one common language. Once you have overcome the barriers of language, there is always going to be a concern about whether you can convey visual information into a universal language. Charts, graphs and diagrams should be less complicated to understand; after all an upward arrow means the same in any language, doesn't it?

There exists vast amounts of research into whether there is a relationship between ethical perceptions and culture. So, in an ever-changing changing cultural landscape, it's crucial to get your diagrams to communicate the right message.

Today, then, a successful diagram is even more important. Nearly half of all Microsoft Office users prefer to use a diagram to convey messages in most of their documents. With the release of Visio 2010, comes an easier way to simplify complex information and present and communicate it with others. Visio 2010 offers tools that help create dynamic, data-driven diagrams that can also be shareable via the Web.

Whether it's an organisational chart, network diagram or a business procedure, the latest tools in Visio 2010 help create visually-stimulating diagrams and ensure that even the most complex information is easy for everyone to understand. There's a large collection of pre-drawn shapes and pictures and there are 66 preset templates in Vision 2010. The Office Ribbon has been incorporated into its user interface - making it easier to find the tools to build, update or view a diagram.

Visio 2010 also brings diagrams to life, connecting data in real time, refreshing automatically when the data changes. This can help to collate separate pieces of information into one visual medium. For example, a business process diagram, and the Excel data related to that process, can be merged into a single, up-to-date view, saving time and helping productivity.

It's easy to place real-time data into the shapes of a diagram. The icons, symbols, colours and bar graphs give a clear view of the information that matters to your business - and automatically links to popular data sources like Excel or Access to help you display visuals that are always current.

And to share on the Web, Visio Services can be used on SharePoint Server 2010, ensuring diagrams are connected to real-time, interactive data. Users can connect a visual to one or more data sources and publish a data-linked diagram to SharePoint Server 2010. Co-workers with SharePoint access can then view the diagram via a web browser - even if they don't have Visio.

Information that had been locked in a spreadsheet or database and a diagram can now be linked together with Visio 2010. This helps organisations get a clear picture of sources of information that need to be merged together and communicated across the organisation.

These are just a few examples of how Visio 2010 can help when we need to communicate and represent data across disparate groups while overcoming cultural boundaries. With Visio 2010, you don't need to worry about losing any information in translation in any of your diagrams.