Tech & Biz

Facebook Translation: Free but Flawed

by Jordan Yerman | April 20, 2008 at 08:42 am

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Facebook is finding the limits of crowdsourcing: if nobody "owns" the task, then quality control becomes impossible. Translation tasks are particularly tough, since, only speakers of the language in question would catch most errors.

Its users around the world are translating Facebook's visible framework into nearly two dozen languages - for free - aiding the company's aggressive expansion to better serve the 60 percent of its 69 million users who live outside the United States.

The company says it's using the wisdom of crowds to produce versions of site guidelines - especially terms specific to Facebook - that are in tune with local cultures.

"We thought it'd be cool," said Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook, based in Palo Alto, Calif. "Our goal would be to hopefully have one day everybody on the planet on Facebook."

Coolness aside, and many users are embracing the idea, other social networks aren't "crowdsourcing" translation. The move is generating mounting criticism online, where some users question whether amateurs can produce good translations. Critics complain of sloppiness and skimping, even as Facebook says it is improving service in an innovative way.

I like the idea of allowing users to actively affect the site on which they spend so much time, but without oversight the projeect just becomes an excercise in procedure, without a viable result.

Several people also question Facebook's motives, as the site is for-profit, and not a wiki. Still, the motivations for user activity in this Web Two Point Oh world don't always include money:

Some users, like Murat Odabasi of London, are spending hours each day translating Facebook. Responsible for 14,910 winning words and 1,938 winning phrases, Odabasi held the No. 2 spot among 391 translators on the Turkish leaderboard as of Wednesday.

Odabasi, 24, a software developer and native Turkish speaker, said the volunteer arrangement is good for users as well as Facebook.

"We come up with the words and phrases that will ... eventually become a part of the Turkish language itself," he said in an e-mail in English. "It feels good to be creating something that will in time be seen and used by millions of people."