It was just over a year ago that Facebook started localizing itself for the world.
As I noted then, the company utilized crowdsourcing to spur its translation efforts. And though volunteers aren’t the only people translating content, a year later, Facebook has done an impressive job of going global.
Om Malik recently reported some key stats from Facebook’s global expansion efforts. Among them:
- Facebook is available in 43 languages and is in the process of being translated into another 60 languages.
- 40 percent of Facebook users are not using English.
- 25,000 volunteers helped translate Facebook into Turkish last year, and there are now 9 million Turkish-language users signed up for Facebook.
Even though only 43 languages are available now, if you add the Facebook Translations application (which i really recommend doing if you’re into this sort of thing), you’ll see the other 60 languages in the pipeline — many of which look pretty much good to go.
Here’s what the Translations pull-down menu looks like:
So many languages my computer is lacking for fonts.
It’s a very safe bet to say that Facebook will support more than 100 languages a year from now.
