As of today, Facebook is available in 23 languages (26 if you count derivative versions of each). There are also 7 languages that are in beta, including the recently seen pirate version. The new languages include a number of Asian languages, primarily seen in southeastern Asia, an area currently dominated by Friendster. As Facebook expands its global reach, it is important that the site be available in all languages.
It appears that many of the languages have been translated in relatively the order of popularity. There are still plenty of languages remaining with 63 other languages being actively translated. One interesting language that’s being added is “Leet Speak” which is the language of uber computer geeks. One commenter on the “Leet Speak” translations section wrote:
I’m sure one of the primary points of debate regarding the translations is how far to vulgarize a word when translating into leet. For example, the word “Leet” could be made into anywhere from l33t to 1337 to 1_ [- [- +. Perhaps this language should be subdivided into different levels of, ahem, legibility?
While another one wrote:
533, i pr3f3r 7h3 v3r510n wi7h n0 5ym8015. 0n1y 13773r5 4nd num83r5
It’s great to see that Facebook is at least leveraging their tools for entertainment purposes and not just utility. Then again, has Facebook ever been simply for utility?
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I think txt spk will be along shortly *shudder*
Comment by Stuey — October 23, 2008 @ 7:13 am
Try Oizea Type, a predictive text input method that let you leet speak in numerals and write regular text.
Comment by Oizea Hatcher — November 23, 2008 @ 5:14 am
I'm always curious. Why doesn't Hindi ever show up as a language? Doesn't matter which popular website you look at, but Hindi never shows up. Nothing against Chinese, but why does Chinese is the first language to show up and Hindi never makes it? Wondering if there;s not enough push from within or is it that there's not much benefit in targeting the Indian market?
Comment by GK — December 9, 2008 @ 1:25 pm
[...] growth, the site is now available in over 30 languages in contrast to the 22 which were available at the end of October. The numerous languages available are clearly contributing to the [...]
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