Google, Facebook, and The Language Revolution

By Harshil Karia • May 16, 2008

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We blogged (2 weeks back) about Google Translate now being available in Hindi. Well you can add more languages to that list. 9 more languages are now being available courtesy Google. The newly featured languages include Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish.

In more language updates, Facebook has also just launched its platform in 3 new languages - Norwegian, Japanese and Polish. Facebook is also working to finish up Chinese as their copycat in China, Xiaonei, recently raised $430 million.

Language is one of the key ingredients for the popularity of a service that is supposed to ‘universally accessible. Google’s services will obviously empower more users (as opposed to Facebook’s translation services) and it’s a welcome move for the dissemination of information.

There is an interesting “Detect Language” feature on Google which helps the user automatically identify the language of the text they’re trying to translate.

Read Jimmy Wales’ thoughts on the importance of translation for Wikipedia. (Jimmy Wales on WATShow)

Categories: International
Tags: facebook, google, Language Revolution, translate, translation, translation tools

About the Author

Harshil Karia

Harshil is one of the Executive Directors at FoxyMoron. Often known as the 'Constant Observer', Harshil's interest lies in New Digital Media, Social Media, Web 2.0 and the Internet in general. He believes strongly in the utilitarian power of the Internet and watching that power take shape fascinates him to a large extent. He is dabbling with design enhancement as well. He pens down his thoughts on BeFoxy as well where he brings forth tools, tricks, and important 'how to' guides on being 'Foxy'. Follow him on Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/harshilkaria

One Response to “ Google, Facebook, and The Language Revolution ”

Rajat Garments May 19th, 2008 at 2:29 am

Yeah its an Actual best way as u said Languages is one of the key ingredients for the popularity of a service that is supposed to ‘universally accessible.
As
Google.co.in offered in: Hindi Bengali Telugu Marathi Tamil
Languages make the person more friendly to access there searches and they are also going on social networking sites orkut , facebook and many more sites.