Your Facebook posts could soon appear in different languages
SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook is letting you post messages in different languages – even if you don’t know the language.
The social networking giant announced Friday it will allow people to create posts in multiple languages, which will then display to users in their native tongue.
In other words, if you create a post in English, you can choose to let Facebook translate the post into another language, like Spanish. When it posts, English-speaking users will immediately see the post in English, while Spanish speakers will see the post in Spanish.
Facebook is introducing the feature to make all posts accessible to their vast numbers of global users. Of Facebook’s 1.09 billion daily active users, 84.2% live outside the U.S. and Canada, and 50% of all users speak a language other than English.
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To use the feature, you write a post in the language you normally use. You can then select one of the 45 languages in a drop-down menu near the post, and Facebook will auto-fill a translation of the original message in the selected language. Your message will automatically appear to each user in whatever language he or she usually communicates in.
Though Facebook already allows you to translate posts by clicking a "See Translation" button under the post, this feature differs through its use of artificial intelligence in both translating and displaying multilingual posts.
Creators of public profiles such as brands, celebrities and media companies have already been using this feature since February.
Software engineers Don Husa, Shawn Mei and Necip Fazil Ayan said authors create a post, then choose additional languages to translate the message in. Facebook then uses a pre-fill feature to translate the original post into other languages, using machine learning models trained on “hundreds of thousands or millions of translations.”
Facebook displays the multilingual post to a user’s native language by determining his or her location, language preferences and the language the user most commonly post in.
“We’re excited to see this tool help even more people on Facebook to connect with their friends who speak different languages,” Husa, Mei and Ayan said in a statement.
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The multilingual feature is part of a medley of changes Facebook announced this week. The social networking service also said it will increase posts from friends and family on News Feeds and allow users to create personal campaigns to raise money for non-profits.
Microsoft and Google have already stepped up their translation services. Microsoft rolled out Skype Translator for Windows late last year, which translated conversations in real-time in six languages – English, French, German, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish. Google Translate, meanwhile, allows Android users to translate text within any app just by tapping on it.