“MABUHAY! Mengalu-alukan!” the tweet reads as social networking site Twitter announced on Monday that its translation center is now available for Filipino and Malay languages.
“As Twitter looks to expand itself around the world, localized translations of the website are a must, and as Facebook has shown, crowdsourced voluntary translations are the most effective way doing this,” posted on the twitter blog on August 1.
The move to localize is seen by Internet analysts as a bold step by the microblogging site to expand in foreign markets and maintain its stranglehold as one of the world’s top social networking websites. Twitter, which allows users to post messages up to 140 characters, has more than 175 million users and trails social network giant Facebook’s 750 million users.
According to a report by comScore, the Philippines ranks sixth worldwide as having the most twitter users, trailing only Japan and Indonesia in the Asia Pacific region. Indonesia and Brazil rank first and second worldwide, followed by Venezuela, Netherlands and Japan. The US ranks 11th as having the most Twitter users, according to comScore.
“Twitter.com has experienced an explosion in global traffic over the past year, establishing itself as one of the most-visited social networking sites across each of the five worldwide regions,” said Graham Mudd, comScore vice president, search & media. “Today nearly 3 out of 4 global Internet users access social networking sites each month, making it one of the most ubiquitous activities across the web. As more users around the world have become acquainted with connecting and expressing themselves through social media, it has created an environment where new media like Twitter can emerge globally in a relatively short period of time.”
Translating Filipino
Given Filipinos penchant for texting, it’s no surprise that twitter has become a popular website in the country and for many Filipinos around the world.
Being able to translate to Filipino can only be seen as a way for Twitter to continue its presence in the Filipino community.
The website relies on more than 200,000 volunteer translators across all languages to help translate a “tweet” into a certain language.
Called crowdsourced voluntary translations, popularized by Facebook, it’s a simple system that allows users to translate and submit a certain word or phrase. Other volunteer translators will then vote on which translations are best and most accurate to use on Twitter.
Aside from Filipino and Malay, Twitter also offers the site to be translated in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Indonesian, Dutch, Russian and Turkish.
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Midweek Aug 3-5, 2011 Sec A pg.4)
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