3 Reasons for Facebook’s Localization by Vote
Translations for Facebook Connect is a new program FB has implemented to get its user interface translated into other languages, according to a write-up in the New York Times by Brad Stone.
Google has been known to do this with machine translation, using technology to automatically translate Web sites and text. FB’s approach will differ, in that:
The translation tool works by asking users to submit possible translations of phrases, and then soliciting their votes on which is the most accurate.
Facebook can get away with this for a few reasons:
- It has the traffic. Large numbers of visitors will yield large numbers of willing translators.
- The traffic is social-minded, instead of hunched over in research mode. Most people spending time on Facebook are in helpful/social mode, instead of trying to get work done. They’ll take the time to work on this and consider it another dimension of customer engagement.
- It has figured out that the best translation is the one the customer wants – or in this case, the largest number of customers wants – so it’s going to give it to them.
It’s open-source translation, after a fashion, which is not that different from open-source software coding, except that the translator community raises a hue and cry when somebody tries to take away potentially paying work, whereas software developers just do it for the crack and to make a better product.
Localization by vote could even help clean up some of the Microsoft-imposed software idiom that users (and translators) in several countries have complained about for years. Your chance to get this vocabulary back on track.
What do you think? Would you help Facebook out?
All for it. Anything that dismantles the Microsoft idiom – 20th Century – and promotes engagement of real users is to be encouraged. Go Facebook.
Go Facebook, indeed. They’ve had a huge amount of coverage as a result of the protests against CS from professional translators. But Facebook is in a small minority of instances where CS will work well. For most commercial enterprises, we don’t have the same natural goodwill, and we need to be waving money for translation services. But I hope it does one thing if at all – and that’s raise the game for professionals. There’s a lot of talk about differentiation between professional and amateur translation. This differentiation may exist, but a) it’s not always demonstrated in some of the quality that is delivered, and b) it’s not always necessary.
@Colin What’s not always necessary: the differentiation or the quality?
Its something that I think is both money-saving and quality assuring for FB.
MyMemory uses a similar method for their shared memory, and it is a great tool.
Great blog you have here, John