Facebook planning to use “crowdsourcing” for cross-cultural translation
According to independent blog Inside Facebook, the social networking site is planning to leverage its community to help translate parts of its UI:
It has been known for a while that Facebook is working on translating the site into a few new key languages. However, beyond this initial step, Facebook is planning an aggressive “crowdsourcing” approach to translate the site into dozens (if not hundreds) of languages around the world by harnessing the collective volunteer power of its user base.
[ Link ]
Facebook is always one of the examples I use to describe the cross-cultural challenges faced by global sites. I’m intrigued by the suggested approach: it’s one thing to translate the labels in links and titles, something that can be probably be done using community power. It’s more difficult, however, to cater to different cultural expectations regarding things like privacy. I assume that Facebook would still be employing a US-centric model for these deeper issues, especially whenever US law requires it. (I wonder if this level of cross-cultural customization is even possible to achieve in a site like Facebook.)
Posted on January 10, 2008
Filed Under Strategies |
Comments
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
You must be logged in to post a comment.