i18n and L10n: 10 - Twitter

October 17th 2009

My opinion on the Twitters decision to translate their web interface into French, Italian, German and Spanish

Social networks are complicated things. For people of a certain generations social networking websites and the Internet are complicated irrelevancies of the modern digital world. In stark contrast social networking sites can be central to your life. Services such as Facebook and MySpace deliver the tools to share photos, send messages and much more. Twitter though is a bit different. Its extremely simple and that is why people can latch on to the concept very quickly.

If you are reading this article confused and unclear as to the nature of Twitter I can elaborate. Previously I have had to explain Twitter to my parents over the dinner table as we watch the evening news. The answer I gave to my mother and father was simply; Twitter is the Internet version of Citizen Band Radio. Whereby users publish little messages in 140 characters or less.

CB Radio was the fore runner to the mobile phone. Allowing wireless communication on the move. You may have seen the handheld microphones for these radios in either Smokey and the Bandit (1977) or The Dukes of Hazzard (1979).

Like CB Radio you choose your own 'handle' as an unique identifier. This like the CB Radio allows users or listeners to locate and follow your chatter with in the melting pot of constant communication. I identify myself as @mattwittering on Twitter. Twitter uses the amphora character '@' for mentioning other users as your Twitter.

Now we have that all out the way who's translating Twitter? Twitter has currently only been available in either English or Japanese. This will soon change. On the 8th October 2009, Biz Stone, founder of Twitter published on the Twitter Blog that more languages are coming soon. The plan is to add French, Italian, German and Spanish translations of the web interface. Like Facebook, Twitter plans to crowd-source the translations:

We are inviting a small group of people to become volunteer translators at first. As more folks volunteer, the translation suggestions should accumulate faster and we'll have enough material to respond by making Twitter available not only in English and Japanese but also French, Italian, German, and Spanish. We will distribute the translations to Twitter platform developers making it easier for them to offer multiple language support as well.

I think that it is appropriate for site owners to use the community to translate interfaces as it will create greater ownership and loyalty for the service. Further localization will then enable the company to increase the number of 'eye-balls' viewing the site in the same manner Facebook has increased its user share. Mashable reported on the 8th October 2009:

Facebook has grown quickly around the world on the heels of its Translation project, and is even starting to make inroads in regions dominated by other social networks, like in Brazil, where Orkut remains top dog.

Unfortunately I do not think new languages are suitable enough attractions for both new and returning Twitter users alone. For me the worrying realisation for Twitter is simply too little too late. Facebook started their translation project more than two years ago. Now with 70 languages and divesting the Brazilian social networking market I believe Twitter has been out paced by the Facebook Platform.

In my opinion Internationalization and Localization should be considered and established from the outset of development. Born global software services must realise this fact from the outset, instead of going back retrospectively. Modern frameworks will help, but organisations must plan early to localise interfaces and databases from the projects inception.

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