As Caroline McCarthy has posted, Facebook is in the process of translating their site into multiple languages. The first site screenshot of Facebook in Spanish is displayed below. Don’t expect to see the new versions right away though. As Caroline points out, Facebook is holding off on switching on the new versions until they have gone through the voting process. This will prevent the site from having spammers or other virtual misfits from playing games with the Facebook translation process.
As has been reported elsewhere, Facebook is using a crowdsourcing model for site translation opting to let the users translate it rather than paying translators. Is there really that much to translate on Facebook? Apparently. Perhaps Facebook is just lazy though. They do let people program on their own platform rather than program all the applications themself. Facebook could have taken the time to build a sheep throwing application but they have avoided the childs play for the time being.
The first translations will be available by the end of the first quarter hopefully and then Facebook is well on its way to world domination! Leveraging the crowdsourced translation model is extremely smart though because if all goes well with the first few languages, Facebook will be able to immediately translate into all the other languages in an extremely short amount of time.
While I won’t be spending much time on the German version of Facebook (or any other language for the most part), Facebook is hoping that millions of users worldwide continue to flock to their site once it has been transalted. Facebook may be able to take on a number of other social networks in a relatively short amount of time if all goes well.
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Javier Olivan from Facebook spoke about the Translations app this evening at the London FB garage.Interesting points were that (evidently from the app), Translations has "deeper hooks" into Facebook than a standard app – i.e. you couldn't build this yourself. But if you want to 'crowdsource' translation of your own app, they are planning to make this possible through Facebook's native Translations app. It's all about a level playing field for apps, you see.They don't have any real ideas about how that will work for now – nor do they know how they'll cope with languages that use non-Roman characters at this stage.But I think we have a promise from Javier!
Comment by Dan Lester — January 23, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
Javier Olivan from Facebook spoke about the Translations app this evening at the London FB garage.
Interesting points were that (evidently from the app), Translations has "deeper hooks" into Facebook than a standard app – i.e. you couldn't build this yourself. But if you want to 'crowdsource' translation of your own app, they are planning to make this possible through Facebook's native Translations app. It's all about a level playing field for apps, you see.
They don't have any real ideas about how that will work for now – nor do they know how they'll cope with languages that use non-Roman characters at this stage.
But I think we have a promise from Javier!
Comment by Dan Lester — January 23, 2008 @ 2:18 pm
Like Dan said, I also saw Javier at the London garage yesterday.I think they key point to take away was their willingness to share this with third party app developers who unlike Facebook will not neccessarily have the financial backing to have their apps translated.If the community can do it for them then everyone benefits though.
Comment by Craig Bovis — January 24, 2008 @ 2:28 am
Like Dan said, I also saw Javier at the London garage yesterday.
I think they key point to take away was their willingness to share this with third party app developers who unlike Facebook will not neccessarily have the financial backing to have their apps translated.
If the community can do it for them then everyone benefits though.
Comment by Craig Bovis — January 24, 2008 @ 3:28 am
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Pingback by Multi-language Facebook would claim world hegemony in social networking : Institute for the Networked Future (INF) — January 25, 2008 @ 5:13 am
Who do I have to sleep with to get facebook translated into my language (Igbo).I think facebook may be the first interactive site to translate to Igbo if this occurs. That would be great and a step in the right direction for this particuar African tribe. What do you think?
Comment by Udochi — April 21, 2008 @ 4:10 pm
Who do I have to sleep with to get facebook translated into my language (Igbo).
I think facebook may be the first interactive site to translate to Igbo if this occurs. That would be great and a step in the right direction for this particuar African tribe.
What do you think?
Comment by Udochi — April 21, 2008 @ 5:10 pm