Facebook Releases Free Tool for Translating Your Site

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Facebook is announcing a new tool, Translations for Facebook Connect, that will tap into the wisdom of the crowd to help webmasters and site owners translate their websites and applications for an international audience.

The technology is based on the same solution Facebook developed for itself when it decided to make the site available in multiple language. The Translations application launched in January 2008 to great success, as volunteers around the globe chipped in to translate Facebook into more than 65 languages.

Translations for Facebook Connect will be released as a free tool for developers. The framework can be used to translate sites into any of the languages Facebook supports — including, of course, Pirate (check out the complete list here). Once enabled, the tool will display content in a visitor’s native language if they log in using Facebook Connect. For all the technical details on how to implement the new framework, head on over to the Facebook Developer Wiki.

What do you think: is Facebook Connect Translations a brilliant way to distribute a huge task, or is Facebook taking advantage of the free labor of the crowds? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Facebook

Tags: crowdsourcing, facebook, facebook connect, languages, translation, Web Development