Category Archives: Software Localization

Facebook: From 1 to 100 languages in two years

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It was just over a year ago that Facebook started localizing itself for the world.

As I noted then, the company utilized crowdsourcing to spur its translation efforts. And though volunteers aren’t the only people translating content, a year later, Facebook has done an impressive job of going global.

Om Malik recently reported some key stats from Facebook’s global expansion efforts. Among them:

  • Facebook is available in 43 languages and is in the process of being translated into another 60 languages.
  • 40 percent of Facebook users are not using English.
  • 25,000 volunteers helped translate Facebook into Turkish last year, and there are now 9 million Turkish-language users signed up for Facebook.

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Even though only 43 languages are available now, if you add the Facebook Translations application (which i really recommend doing if you’re into this sort of thing), you’ll see the other 60 languages in the pipeline — many of which look pretty much good to go.

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Here’s what the Translations pull-down menu looks like:

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So many languages my computer is lacking for fonts.

It’s a very safe bet to say that Facebook will support more than 100 languages a year from now.

Watch out ProZ, here comes Google Translation Center

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Within the translation industry, ProZ is widely known as the leading public network of freelance translators and buyers of translation services.

But here comes Google…

According to Blogoscoped, Google is about to launch the Google Translation Center.

This is an exciting development, though I don’t expect everyone to suddenly ditch ProZ for Google. Why? Because much of the appeal of ProZ is the community, which Google does not appear to be trying to support. Still, freelancers will certainly want to investigate this potential new resource.

I’ve called out ProZ as one company under threat from Google Translation Center. But EVERY translation agency needs to keep a close eye on this service. It could be a threat. It could also end up being something translation agencies use themselves — instead of paid platforms from SDL. Naturally, for this to happen this new platform has a lot of evolving to do. Still, I can’t help but wonder.

There is no mention of whether or not Google will support machine translation and/or translation memory. I’m assuming they will.

I have LOTS of questions and this service isn’t even live yet. So we shall see what happens. But this is big news, no question.

I wrote awhile back, that the translation industry as we know it is over. The technologists have taken over and they’re bringing brute force computing and massive networks to the table to reduce costs and increase time to market. This is just another sign of this macro trend.

What do you think? Is Google going to disrupt the translation industry or is this new platform going to fall flat?

(Thx Chris for the heads up!)

Update: I just read an insightful article on this Google’s service at GigaOm…

Has Google hit a language ceiling?

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Google announced that they now have 30 products available in 30 languages. And many of these products, such as Gmail and Adwords, now support 40 languages.

Here is a graph they published of the rate of growth of their language support. It’s a very impressive visual, but I found it potentially misleading.

Google\'s 40-language graph

What is being displayed is not the total number of “unique” languages Google supports, just the total number of product/language combinations. And that’s an important detail.

Google is nowhere near supporting 1,400 different languages. Their search engine interface, which supports roughly 120 languages, represents the maximum number of languages the company supports. And this number has only increased by about 10 languages over the past two years.

The other Google applications appear to have peaked (for now) at between 40 and 43 languages.

To support 40 languages is remarkable. Based on my survey of 225 global Web sites in the 2008 Web Globalization Report Card, fewer than 10 companies support 40 or more languages (English excluded).

Still, it looks as if Google is now focused on getting its increasingly wide selection of software up to the 40-language mark rather than aggressively pushing into brand new languages. Gmail, for instance, now appears to be adding a language or two per year — rather than 10 to 20, which is the pace we’ve been seeing with YouTube and Blogger.

Will Facebook become the world’s largest translation platform?

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Techcrunch reports from Facebook’s developer conference today in which company announced that it would open its “crowdsourcing” translation platform to its legion of application developers. Here’s the press release excerpt:

As a result of the worldwide success of Facebook’s translation system, the company has opened up the Translation Application to any developer using Facebook Platform. Beginning today, any Facebook developer can make their application available in any of the 20 languages that are currently available on Facebook, with 69 more coming soon.

Developers can now access the Translation Application to either translate their applications themselves, or open up translation of their application to Facebook users around the world, who will work together to define it in their native languages.

Developers are naturally very excited about this development because they can tap into the same group of enthusiastic volunteers who are currently translating Facebook’s interface into different languages. Or, developers can pay translators or agencies to do the translation.

Facebook knows that part of the value of its platform are the third-party applications. As I mentioned a few days ago, I was concerned that so many of Apple’s iPhone apps are currently in English only. And it’s safe to say that Apple is nowhere close to launching anything similar to what Facebook is now doing.

As Facebook goes global with its platform, it wants all of its 400,000 developers (more than half of which live outside of the US) to come along as well. Opening up the translation platform is a win-win for everyone.

And we could see Facebook’s translation platform become a force onto itself.

It will be interesting to see what role translation agencies and freelance translators will play. I see a nice opportunity, because some of these app developers will want to pay a premium to have professional translators involved.

PS: Techcrunch also shares some data on Facebook’s global traffic growth — a sign that this translation program is perfectly timed.