The disadvantage of a pivot language is that each step of retranslation introduces possible mistakes and ambiguities – using a pivot language involves two steps, rather than one.
English, French, Russian, and Arabic are often used as pivot languages.
Pivot coding is also a common method of translating data for computer systems.
For example, the Internet Protocol, XML and high level languages are pivot codings of computer data which are then often rendered into internal binary formats for particular computer systems.
Unicode was designed to be usable as a pivot coding between various major existing character encodings, though its widespread adoption as a coding in its own right has made this usage unimportant.