Categories: Social Media

Facebook launches new inline translation service

Facebook quietly rolled-out a new inline translation feature last night. The service, which uses Bing Translate, allows users to translate public Facebook Page content, like comments, into their own language.

A new ‘Translate’ link now appears under a public page’s post. When clicked, the post’s content is translated inline to a language that the user has specified as their own in their personal profile settings. The translate link only appears when the post is written in a language other that the user’s specified one.

If users wish to revert back to the original post’s language they can click the ‘Original’ link that replaces the ‘Translate’ one upon translation.

Translating a comment into English on Le Monde's Facebook page

Users in Korea, Japan, Russia, Taiwan and Hong Kong are also given the option to suggest their own translation of post content. If their suggested translations receive enough positive votes from other Facebook users, this human translation replaces Bing’s machine transcription.

Page administrators are shown a ‘Manage Translations’ link underneath posts on pages they manage. A popout window appears allowing them to approve translations or to offer their own content translation. Any users offering abusive or spammy translations can be blocked by page administrators.

Albizu Garcia

Albizu Garcia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gain -- a marketing technology company that automates the social media and content publishing workflow for agencies and social media managers, their clients and anyone working in teams.

View Comments

Recent Posts

‘Enormously intrusive’ collaborative sensing is beneficial to society: WEF podcast

The massive city-wide surveillance that collaborative sensing requires is a tremendous temptation for tyrants: perspective…

1 day ago

AI set to transform Product Development Lifecycle with new software engineering workbench

Innovation in software can lay claim to the very solutions that today have become the…

3 days ago

The Sociable’s 50 Under 50 Enterprise Executives

Rising from a decade of economic ambiguity, technological disruption, and the lingering specter of a…

4 days ago

UN to create taskforce on ‘disinformation’ affecting its mandate: Global Risk Report

Addressing disinformation has little to do with getting to the truth and everything to do…

4 days ago

Horasis addresses global turbulence with assembly of influential leaders in São Paulo, Brazil this October

After many years of relative stability, it seems clear we are now in a period…

1 week ago

A cyberattack or software update could trigger a robot insurgency: RAND

A future cyberattack or software update could trigger a robot insurgency, according to a report…

1 week ago