Comments on: Facebook Gets Aggressive On Translations, Adding 22 More Languages

By: sohbet

sohbet — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:59:30 +0000

Signed the Petition
Good cause and work there.

By: perde

perde — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:09:17 +0000

good

By: Facebook v. MySpace In The U.S. Market: The Music Factor

Facebook v. MySpace In The U.S. Market: The Music Factor — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:28:13 +0000

[...] strategy for quickly rolling out localized versions of sites by getting their users to do the translation work for them (MySpace, by contrast, expands via a command-and-control infrastructure that puts people [...]

By: Facebook中文版本 - Greenmoon55’s Blog - Just another WordPress weblog

Facebook中文版本 - Greenmoon55’s Blog - Just another WordPress weblog — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:23:56 +0000

[...] 早有传言称Facebook要退出简体中文版本，今天下午又在CB上看到Facebook要靠志愿者翻译，还说“一口气推出了22个新语言版本的网站。中文也位列其中”，找来的英文原稿是这样写的，只是开始翻译而已： They’re using their new user-powered translation engine to get Facebook into 22 more languages, on top of English, French, German and Spanish. [...]

By: Albert

Albert — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:02:47 +0000

If you think about it, this is a pretty crazy project. On average, someone would translate about 200 words for 10 dollars. Let’s say each language has 50,000 words to be translated. That’s 500,000 dollars for each langauge. 22 Languages equals 1.1 million in savings. Not a bad idea…

By: Fidel Cast

Fidel Cast — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 04:14:19 +0000

Who uses Facebook? Who would do anything for those guys?

By: FACEBOOK BABEL, MAS LENGUAS MAS USUARIOS - CAFEGUAGUAU - UN CAFE PARA COLOMBIA Y EL MUNDO

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:24:25 +0000

[...] que nosotros los usuarios podemos colaborar activamente en proporción a nuestros conocimientos con 22 nuevas lenguas con lo que se pretende globalizar el servicio de Facebook. En la actualidad Facebook esta [...]

By: Mario Mansour

Mario Mansour — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:02:47 +0000

I only hope (maybe dream) that users don’t listen to this. Like Jon said, I don’t really get it why are they asking their users to do it.
They got the money, why not hire teams to do the translations.

What are people getting from this translation anyway?? It’s in no way Win-Win App (Jean-Marie Le Ray) that’s Facebook only wins.

Users trying to translation should already be doing fine with english, why bother translating it to another language? Just to let more users with less language skills join? Who the winner now?

There’s only one message here: If they want to go international, let Mark do the job himself

By: Facebook añade traducciones de 22 idiomas más

Facebook añade traducciones de 22 idiomas más — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:05:01 +0000

[...] su red a nuevos idiomas. La red ha implementado su herramienta de traducción para que los usuarios puedan traducir a 22 nuevos idiomas, añadiéndose a las versiones en inglés, francés, alemán y [...]

By: Luke Noel-Storr

Luke Noel-Storr — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:35:09 +0000

I still want to know when they’re going to let us translate the site into English, so that I can list my ‘Favourite TV Programmes’ and say that I met people at ‘Primary School’, ‘Secondary School’, or ‘University’.

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:45:36 +0000

Wow, your 4th post on Facebook localizing their web site.

I’m about to stab my fucking eyes out with how old this is getting.

By: Jean-Marie Le Ray

Jean-Marie Le Ray — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:23:24 +0000

Wow, I’ve got exactly what people will need to help Facebook to localize!
Just try this Win-Win App: http://apps.facebook.com/translationstwo/
Read the Win-Win Contest Rules @ http://translation2.com/index.php?id=26 and the search engine FAQ @ http://translation2.com/index.php?id=24
Enjoy! And by the way, this is not an April Fool’s joke!!!
Jean-Marie

By: Irene Smith

Irene Smith — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:21:52 +0000

Considering the enormous size of the non English speaking market and Facebooks aggressive corporate culture, this is a very logical move.

Irene Green lasers guide

By: mike periu

mike periu — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:18:35 +0000

I think its great that Facebook is expanding its multilingual reach through this initiative. I am however, disappointed that they did not choose to use professional translators for such an important task. Relying on the user base won’t necessarily produce optimal translations and can lead to common problems such as:
>grammatical and spelling errors that will turn off many users;
>selection of slang used only by certain subgroups or cultural groups that are not shared by other speakers of that language;
>use of terms that are acceptable in one country that speaks a certain language but unacceptable (or even offensive) to residents of another country that speak that language.

Professional translators (of which there are many) who are trained and certified for this task could do this job properly. Given the global marketplace for translations, this could have been done for globally competitive rates too.

Of course if your customers are willing to do your work for free, its hard to go against that, but the risks associated with quality and efficacy are too great for a company trying to establish a global brand.

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:09:18 +0000

Let me see, a company worth 15B has to ask it’s USERS to work for FREE to help them translate the site so that their over-inflated evaluation can be puffed-up even higher?

I don’t get it. I am all for crowd sourcing for good causes but when you have more “perceived value” then most countries on this planet… don’t you think asking users to do this a little wacky?

Jon
http://dreamclue.com … get the message!

By: Tyler Wright

Tyler Wright — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:20:50 +0000

Ya, I reckon 785 inbox messages is pretty hardcore.

By: eee eee

eee eee — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:05:16 +0000

hey

By: David Kahn

David Kahn — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:39:43 +0000

Wow Arrington, answer your inbox messages, 785? I’ve never seen that many. And I thought having three unread messages was unbelievable. Now I have to translate that into Polski all by myself. I envy Facebook *waves fist in air*!

By: Saeed

Saeed — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:38:43 +0000

where is arabic? middle east is well established on the site (lebanon, iraq, palestine)…

By: 113.com

113.com — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:10:19 +0000

@3
or better yet.. 2/3 of their users are non-US and non-China..
Anyway, for China, need some special formulas, i18n/l10n alone isn’t enough…

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:04:04 +0000

Ryan - recent stats from FB say 2/3 of their users are non-US. It was 50/50 last Fall.

By: Ryan Merket

Ryan Merket — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:03:07 +0000

Great move by Facebook. There IS a market outside of the US/Canada.

By: 113.com

113.com — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:01:15 +0000

It’s certainly time to do that… cf. MySpace’s…