It was just over a year ago that Facebook started localizing itself for the world. The company utilized outsourcing 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.
Some recently reported key stats from Facebook’s global expansion efforts include:
- 40 percent of Facebook users are not using English.
- More than 70 percent of Facebook users are outside the United States.
- It reaches more than 10 percent of the total national population in 26 countries.
- FaceBook is available in 43 languages and is in the process of being translated into another 60 languages.
- 25,000 volunteers helped translate Facebook into Turkish last year, and there are now 9 million Turkish-language users signed up for Facebook.
See: MintTwist
Comments about this article
Local time: 07:29
Spanish to English
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25 thousand volunteers helped translate the Turkish version? That alone should comfort all us 'mere' professionals. If we are to believe this link http://tur.proz.com/?set_site_lang=tur Proz.com is being localized into Turkis... See more
25 thousand volunteers helped translate the Turkish version? That alone should comfort all us 'mere' professionals. If we are to believe this link http://tur.proz.com/?set_site_lang=tur Proz.com is being localized into Turkish by just 4 colleagues: shule, Whiz, terjuman and Ça?da? Karata?.
Wow! How do they cope?
MediaMatrix ▲ Collapse
Chinese to Italian
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well, it's nice to volunteer but I'm pretty sure that facebook could afford to pay its translators...:-) If one had to volunteer there must be quite a number of under-funded organizations which would need it more than Mr. Zuckerberg and Co.
France
Local time: 11:29
German to French
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Agree with you, Fabrizio!!!
United States
Local time: 06:29
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
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Funny how some things come full circle. When I started translating 18 years ago, I translated bulletin board systems (the early version of a website and forum and you could say, the predecessor for sites like Facebook) for free into Spanish, French and German (did not know that I should only translate into English then).
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