Facebook is going multilingual. On Thursday, the social-networking giant announced the first step toward internationalizing the site with a translation into Spanish.

Nearly 1,500 Spanish-speaking users on Facebook translated the site from English to Spanish in less than four weeks, Facebook said. German and French versions of the site are expected to launch in coming weeks.

“Over 60 percent of Facebook users are now outside of the U.S., and many live in countries where English is not the primary language,” said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook. “Our goal has always been to allow citizens to use Facebook in their native language, so we built an application to enable users to participate in translating the site into their local languages and dialects.”

Language Is fundamental

Facebook currently has more than 2.8 million users in Latin America and Spain. Beginning Monday, anyone who visits Facebook.com from a Spanish-speaking country will see the site in Spanish. Other users who

want to view Facebook in Spanish can change their language preference in their detail settings.

From a social-networking perspective, language is one of the most crucial aspects of the user experience, according to Lee Raine, a project director at the Pew Net & American Life Project. Socializing is much easier whether the network members speak the same native tongue with all its nuances, he added.

“Adding new language capabilities is a natural way for any social-networking enterprise to get ahead,” Raine said. “Social-networking sites plus take off in different cultures. It’s much easier now to find folks in different cultures who otherwise share your interests and passions, or the things that form you you. Facilitating that in a global sense makes some sense.”

Tackling the Translation

Facebook relied on its community for the translation. Users who added the Facebook translation application were allowed to submit translations while browsing the…

Orginal post by Top Tech News