Facebook likely to add “translate” button to its pages

Source: The International Business Times
Story flagged by: RominaZ

Rumor has it that Facebook may be testing a translation feature to add in its social networking domain.

This move could overcome the language barrier faced by many users on the network.

The translation tool reportedly is for comments. A new Translate button at the bottom of comments (only on Pages) and next to the Like button will be seen, according to Inside Facebook.

Clicking on the Translate button will translate the comment to the language that your account page is set to see. Once the translation is done, an Original button would appear, by clicking which, you can get the text back in the language it originally was.

As of now, it is unclear as to how many languages the translator supports. Although so far, English, Spanish, French, Hebrew, and Chinese appear to be on the list.

The system is not perfect and it does not always translate all the words. At times it shows error that reads, “There is no translation available for this story at the moment,” zdnet.com reports.

The feature may particularly be useful for Page owners who have to rely on a third-party translation service in order to understand what their fans are commenting and posting. Also, it could benefit game and app users who want to interact with other gamers who do not speak the same language. And of course, this will be an excellent tool for people who want to interact with people from other countries speaking other languages, but cannot because of the language barrier, the report says.

See: The International Business Times

Also see: PC mag

Comments about this article


Facebook likely to add "translate" button to its pages
Ikram Mahyuddin
Ikram Mahyuddin  Identity Verified
Индонезия
Local time: 23:50
Член ProZ.com c 2006
английский => индонезийский
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Interesting news Sep 6, 2011

That's my comment as a translator and a facebooker at the same time. I would like to know other fellow translators' comments on this.icon_smile.gif

 
Neil Coffey
Neil Coffey  Identity Verified
Великобритания
Local time: 16:50
французский => английский
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Sounds fair enough... Sep 6, 2011

Something like Facebook comments is more like the kind of thing that Machine Translation is intended for: content where:

(a) it is realistically too dynamic for human translation to be practical;
(b) Nothing Bad Will Happen when translation mistakes occur, or the risks/consequences of translation mistakes are reasonable enough to accept (though look out for a future edition of Jerry Springer where somebody is suing somebody for thinking they were sleeping with their brother when
... See more
Something like Facebook comments is more like the kind of thing that Machine Translation is intended for: content where:

(a) it is realistically too dynamic for human translation to be practical;
(b) Nothing Bad Will Happen when translation mistakes occur, or the risks/consequences of translation mistakes are reasonable enough to accept (though look out for a future edition of Jerry Springer where somebody is suing somebody for thinking they were sleeping with their brother when it was actually their brother-in-law/stepsister/pet chimpanzee);
(c) if the free feature didn't exist, nobody would care enough to pay for a translation.
Collapse


 
ATIL KAYHAN
ATIL KAYHAN  Identity Verified
Турция
Local time: 19:50
Член ProZ.com c 2007
турецкий => английский
+ ...
Good News Sep 6, 2011

The more people use machine translation, the more they will get to knows the ins and outs of it.

 
Dave Bindon
Dave Bindon  Identity Verified
Греция
Local time: 18:50
греческий (новогреческий) => английский
It's up and running already Sep 6, 2011

The 'translate' link already appears next to comments on Greek pages. Since most of the comments are in very idiomatic language, the translation results are quite comical.

 
Ikram Mahyuddin
Ikram Mahyuddin  Identity Verified
Индонезия
Local time: 23:50
Член ProZ.com c 2006
английский => индонезийский
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Thank you for comments Sep 8, 2011

Neil Coffey, Atil Kayhan, and Dave Bindon, thank you for your comments.

 
Andreas Morgenstern
Andreas Morgenstern  Identity Verified
Германия
Local time: 17:50
английский => немецкий
+ ...
Now this will cause a lot of confusion Sep 8, 2011

Some of my friends are using Google Translate to translate my conversations in other languages.

Mostly, it ends up like this:
Friend "Huh, you are going to Memphis with X?"
Me "No, I am going to pick X up at her office"

I don't think machine translation will help anyone.


 
Power Translate
Power Translate  Identity Verified
Германия
Local time: 17:50
английский => немецкий
+ ...
Just encourage users to speak English Sep 9, 2011

I usually just encourage people to comment in English on my fan pages which makes sense since the people they are about are American and my business fan page is definitely about German and English, it's no problem. If someone does comment in a language I don't speak, I try to get a machine translation to get the gist and then comment with the content of what it says.

 

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