Facebook’s first foreign language versions were made available just over a year ago, yet the social networking giant’s interface now exists in 43 languages.
On February 11, 2008, Facebook launched its first foreign language interface, in Spanish. The site is now available in 43 languages, and much, although not all, of its foreign language translation has been carried out through crowdsourcing.
While crowdsourcing, or user-generated content, remains controversial, no one can deny that Facebook’s overall internationalization strategy has been successful.
“As very close followers of Facebook’s growth and metrics, we at Inside Facebook have been absolutely astounded by Facebook’s international growth in 2008,” reports Inside Facebook. “While Facebook’s international audience totaled 34 million people at the beginning of 2008, on the first day of 2009 that number had increased to 95 million - nearly 70% of the total Facebook audience.”
Any debate about crowdsourcing aside, these figures make it clear that language translation allows companies to reach out to much wider audiences.
Is your company considering a language translation project? At Language Translation Inc. in San Diego, we have been providing top-notch language translation and localization services for 20 years. “Let us show you how good translation should be.”
Betty Carlson
Click here to download our free language translation guides.
See Also
- Language Translation Inc.
Language Translation Inc., a San Diego-based company has been serving the U.S. and countries abroad since 1989 with professional document translation, certified conference interpreting, and software / website localization services.
