ABOUT TEXAS:

With great natural resources and a large population, Texas has been considered one of the most prosper states of the United States of America. Although the capital of the state is Austin, its most populated city is Houston, which is considered an industrial center not only for the state, but also for the country and for North America.

As the second largest state in the United States, Texas is home to three of the largest cities in the country: Houston, which is the largest city in Houston and the fourth largest in the United States; Dallas; and San Antonio. Texas is also home to another two cities that are part of the list of the twentieth largest cities in the United States: Austin and Fort Worth.

Texas is the 27th largest country subdivision in the world; it is 10% larger than France and almost twice as large as Germany or Japan. If Texas was a country, it would be the 40th largest in the world after Chile and Zambia.

A region as large, diverse and prosper as the state of Texas represents a magnificent and huge market full of opportunities for many companies and businesses from all around the world that are planning or want to grow and develop new relationships in an industrial region of the United States and North America.

Day Translations is fully aware of that big opportunity that many companies are trying to reach, and has the best and the highest quality translation and interpretation solutions for all those who want to establish communication with the Texas business society.

We are talking about a large and strong economy that is rapidly growing and developing. Texas’ Gross State Product (GSP), which is the second largest in the country, is comparable to the Gross Domestic product (GDP) of large and powerful countries like Canada and India, which rank 11th and 12th worldwide.

Also, Texas’ economy constitutes the third largest economy among all the country subdivisions in the world after California and the Tokyo Prefecture. Different sectors and industries such as petroleum, agriculture, high tech, computers, electronics, petrochemicals, aerospace, energy, higher education and biomedical sciences constitute some of the most powerful bases of a growing economy that still has a lot to develop and to produce.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT TEXAS:

• The famous term “Six Flags Over Texas” makes an allusion to the several nations that have governed Texas’ territory through history. In the past, the Texas state was an Independent Republic, but was also under the domain of different countries like Spain, Mexico, France and the United States. Mexico was defeated by the United States in the war that took place between the two countries in 1846, when the United States annexed Texas to its territory as its 28th state.

• Texas lived a huge economic boom during the early 1900’s due to the discovery of oil wells that led to the development of the petroleum industry in the state. This boom augmented the importance of the state and attracted many new immigrants from other states, as well as from Mexico and other Hispanic countries, which led to a huge growth of the global Texas population.

• Texas is the center of the Republican power in the country; two former Republican presidents of the United States are from Texas: Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush.

• The most numerous ethnic groups in Texas are the Mexicans (25.3%), the Germans (10.9%), the African Americans (10.5%), the English (7.2%) and the Scottish Irish (7.2%).

• Texas is one of the four states of the United States (together with California, New Mexico and Hawaii) that has a population that is not dominated by people of Anglo-Saxon origins. The state population is distributed like this: 84.14% are whites, 12.09% are blacks, 3.62% are Asians, 1.1% are Amerindians or natives from Alaska and 0.17% are Hawaiian natives or Pacific islanders. Also, 35.31% of the global population of Texas has Hispanic origins. This population –the Latinos and Hispanics- is the one that presents the fastest growth in the state.

• Texas has no official language as a state. The most spoken language in its territory is English with 68.8% of the population using it as its first language, and the second most spoken language is Spanish with 27% of the population. There are another 143 languages that are spoken in the Texas state, but they only represent less than 1% of the population. The Spanish speaking population of Texas has had a big growth due to the increment in the Latin and Hispanic immigration.

• The state flower of Texas is the Texas Bluebonnet (Lupinus Texensis); the state bird is the Mocking bird (Mimus polyglottos); the mascot is the armadillo; and the typical food is the chili con carne.

• There were several indigenous groups that lived within the Texas territories many years ago; most of them were exterminated or decimated after Texas became part of the United States of America. The native communities that once inhabited the territories of Texas were: the Apaches, the Atakapa, the Caddo Nation, the Comanche, the Bidai, the Chocktaw, the Hasinai, the Cherokee, the Kiowa, the Jumano, the Coahuiltecan, the Tonkawa, the Wichita and the Karankawa Indians (from Galveston). Today, there are just three indigenous groups that reside in Texas and that are federally recognized: the Alabama-Coushatta Indian Tribe of Texas; the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe; and the Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo (also Tigua Pueblo).

• Texas largest cities are (in order): Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth, El Paso, Arlington, Corpus Christi, Plano, Laredo, Lubbock and Irving.

• The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington Metropolitan Area is the largest in Texas, the fourth largest in the United States after the metropolitan areas of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and is home to six of the most populated cities in the country. It is also the sixth largest Gross Metropolitan Product (GMP) in the United States and the tenth largest in the world. The Houston Metropolitan Area is the sixth largest in the country.

• The “Lone Star” of Texas’ nickname (“The Lone Star State”) appears on the Texas state flag and on the Texas state seal.

• The Texas state is often associated with landscapes like the Southwestern deserts, but it has much more to offer. The truth is less than ten percent of its territories are deserts. The state has very different landscapes such as piney woods, coastal swamps, rolling planes, rugged hills, desert and the mountains of the Big Bend. Also, the population centers of Texas are situated in territories of former grasslands, prairies, forests and the coastline.

• Texas passed through a very difficult economic period after the American Civil War. After the war, one of the most important industries for the state’s economic recovery was the cattle industry. Today, cattle is the state’s most valuable agricultural product (Texas is the leader in the production of sheep and goat products in the United States). Also, Texas has the most farms and the highest acreage in the United States. The “Lone Star State” has been recognized as an important center for the cattle industry and that is why it has been associated with the image of the cowboy.

• Texas holds the most Fortune 500 company headquarters in the United States and some of them do not belong to the state’s traditional industries; for instance, Kimberly-Clark, Blockbuster, AT&T, Whole Foods Market, Men’s Warehouse, Tenet Healthcare and Landry’s Restaurants.

• The oil discoveries that led to the economic boom in Texas were determinant for the great investments in universities in the state, which, in turn, let to a diversified economy that included many high tech companies. In addition to the universities, there are initiatives like the “Texas Enterprise Fund” and the “Texas Emerging Technology Fund” that have helped in the development of these high tech industries, which has made of Texas the home of the headquarters of very important high tech companies such as AT&T, Dell Inc., Texas Instruments, Perot Systems, and Electronic Data Systems EDS (part of Hewlett Packard since 2008); it was also home to the headquarters of the former Compaq Computer Corp (which today is the larger campus of Hewlett Packard, located in California).

• Since 2002, the Texas state has lead export revenue in the United States.

• Two of the cities of the state of Texas (Dallas and Houston) have been included in the “Beta World Cities” by the GaWC studies, which analyze and choose cities that have become important node points in the global economic system.

• Texas ranks second among the highest number of millionaires per state in the United States. In 2010, there were 346.000 millionaires in Texas.

• The three billion dollar Texas Enterprise Fund was one of the crucial elements for the election of Texas as the “most business friendly state” by Site Selection Magazine in 2004.

• Texas is a national leader in various industries: it leads the nation in the production of cotton; in the livestock production; in creating cement, crushed stone, lime, salt, sand and gravel; it has a large commercial fishing industry; and it grows significant amount of cereal crops.

• Texas has a very strong commercial sector that consists of banking and insurance; wholesale; retail; and construction industries.

• The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington Metropolitan Area has the second shopping mall in the United States. It also has the highest concentration of shopping malls per capita of any American metropolitan area.

• Texas has the most airports of any state in the United States. The largest one is the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), which is also the second largest in the United States and the fourth largest in the world. The DFW international airport is also the busiest in Texas, the fourth busiest in the country and the sixth busiest in the world.

• Today, the Port of Houston is the busiest port in the United States in foreign tonnage, the second in overall tonnage and the tenth in tonnage in the world.

• The six state university systems of Texas are: the University of Texas, the Texas A&M, the University of Houston, the University of North Texas, the Texas State and Texas Tech. The largest ones are the two first. The state has also four independent public universities and many private educational institutions specialized in many different areas. One example of a very important private institution is Rice University, which is one of the leading teaching and research universities in the country and ranks 17th among the nation’s best overall universities, according to U.S. News & World Report.

• Currently, two universities of Texas are home to two presidential libraries: the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum at the University of Texas at Austin. Also, the Southern Methodist University will be home to a new project: the George W. Bush Presidential Library, which will be the third in the state.

• There are many famous people and personalities from the state of Texas like: Steve Austin, Demi Lovato, Selena Gómez, Renée Zellweger, Hilary Duff, Kelly Clarkson, Beyoncé, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jessica Simpson, Ashlee Simpson, Ryan Cabrera, Flyleaf, Lance Armstrong, Dennis Quaid, Steve Martin, Piper Perabo, Jennifer Stone, Eva Longoria, Ana Nicole Smith, Barry White, George W. Bush, Matthew McConaughey, Doris Miller, Joan Crawford and more.