Emma Okonji
In keeping to his promise to create additional languages on Facebook, its founder, Mark Zuckerberg has announced the addition of three new languages-Corsican, Fulah and Maltese- on the social media platform. With these three languages, Facebook is now available in 101 languages and now more than one billion people use Facebook in different languages other than English.
According to Zuckerberg, “Our mission is to give people the power to share and to make the world more open and connected and language is vital to connecting. We discovered this very early on in our history when Facebook was only available in English, but the people using Facebook were from all over the world.”
“In 2007 we built a Translate Facebook app that enabled anyone to translate the Facebook interface into their own language. Over the years, a vibrant community has developed that is helping make Facebook available in languages from all over the world,” Zuckerberg said.
“What is particularly interesting about this community is that they have helped Facebook translate the service into nine languages that are on UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. These languages are the hardest languages to translate – there are fewer people speaking them and many of them oftentimes are not spoken in the home,” he said.
According to him, much is carried through language – tradition, culture, different opinions – it is vital to have these languages in danger represented on Facebook because it opens up communication and connectedness to more people.
“There are thousands of languages in the world and to connect everyone, we have to be available in languages people are comfortable with and understand. We have a long way to go in collaborating with the community of translators and are so grateful for all of their help,” Zuckerberg added.
Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what is going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them. Facebook has 1.04 billion daily active users on average worldwide and 7.2 million daily visitors from Nigeria.
