The Facebook Blog

No matter where you are on the web, you can stay close and share with your friends through the Facebook Toolbar. Originally launched in English for the Firefox browser, we now have released an Internet Explorer version of the toolbar and made both versions available in a total of 16 languages.

You can use the toolbar to easily visit the most common sections and applications on Facebook, including your home page, profile and Inbox. You also can see how many friend requests, Inbox message and event and group invitations you have from icons near... the top of your browser, and then click to view them.



When you find an interesting news story, funny video or other content you like on the web, click the "Share" button on the toolbar to share it with your friends on your Facebook. The toolbar even gives you a quick way to upload photos to your profile.

The languages now supported are Arabic, Chinese (simple and traditional), Danish, Dutch, German, Spanish (Spain and international), French, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Swedish and Turkish. You can download the latest Facebook Toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer here.


Yishan is a software engineer at Facebook.

Since launching our Translations application two years ago, more than 300,000 people have answered the call to contribute translations and make Facebook available in more than 70 different languages. These translators are helping more people connect in the languages that feel most comfortable to them, no matter how big or small of a community speaks a language or dialect. For all of their efforts, we think that translators deserve some extra recognition.

Today, we're launching an award system for translators where they'll receive special icons... as they reach various milestones in the Translations application. The awards are grouped into the following three categories, and their levels vary based on the frequency and accuracy of translators' contributions in such activities as translating words and voting on the best translations:

• Voting Participation


• Words Published


• Translations Published

We are starting with nine possible awards, but we will consider adding more depending on the feedback we receive. These new awards complement the leaderboard we previously put in place in the application to publicly spotlight top translators.



We would have never accomplished so much so quickly without the help of all of you who have contributed to translating Facebook. Since the first translation, we've grown to more than 350 million users on Facebook, with 70 percent of them now outside of the United States. We appreciate the hard work from all of you who've taken part, and we hope you'll enjoy translating even more with the new award system.

If you know multiple languages and haven't yet tried the Translations application, we encourage you to give it a try here. Your contributions make a big difference.


Eric Kwan, a Facebook engineer on Internationalization and a part-time pack rat, is collecting translation awards.

Most of the time when we stumble upon a Latin phrase, it's etched in stone: carved in the hallways of universities, chiseled on facades of government buildings or carefully imprinted in cathedral foyers and churchyards. The language seems almost immovable. Yet beginning today, Latin — the staid and reliable language — springs to life on Facebook.

Latin has joined the more than 70 languages we've made available on the site in the past two years, including some which have launched just today — Azeri, Faroese, Georgian and Nepali. Some of these... are languages that millions of people speak across the globe. Others are dialects that specific communities use in select geographic areas. Still others are just for fun: "Pirate" may not appeal to everyone, but for those nostalgic for the days of Blackbeard and Captain Hook, it's there for you in Facebook's language drop-down menu.

To students of Latin, the availability of the language on Facebook may be just what's needed to narrow the distance between themselves and the venerable language. After all, the experience of studying Latin can frequently seem somewhat far and away. Even the readings prescribed by Latin teachers have an air of detachment about them: Cicero and Demosthenes, Caesar and Virgil. While students of "living languages" practice on subtitled films and in conversation groups, on vacations and with exchange students, Latin scholars soak in rare living breaths of their studied language, satisfying themselves with the occasional legal phrase, nursery plant, benediction or school motto. Recognizing verb stems and identifying vocabulary roots just somehow aren't quite the same as ordering off a menu or asking for directions.

Though Latin has been long out of use, for some of us, it never loses its intrigue. As a native English speaker, I enrolled in Latin to supplement my study of Romance languages. I still remember reading a translated copy of "Winnie the Pooh" in Latin, and gradually working my way through state speeches and philosophic commentary dating from the Roman Empire. When I joined Facebook a year ago, I chose a Latin phrase, "dictum meum pactum" ("my word is my bond"), as the phrase that currently appears on my Facebook business card.



It's been a few years since I've cracked open my Latin textbook, but I'm grateful to all of the people on Facebook who meticulously translated the site into a "dead" language. Cobwebs may accumulate on the stones that bear Latin phrases, but they will never conceal its distinguished past, nor stand in the way of people's desire to keep the language alive — even on the web.


Elizabeth, an associate on the Facebook communications team, is looking forward to dusting off her Latin by using it as her language setting on Facebook.

Everyone has a name, but some people are known by more than one. I am one of them. I grew up in Taiwan and all of my friends in Taiwan recognize me by my Chinese name, while the friends I've made after I moved abroad know me by my English name.

Both are part of my real identity, but until now I could only show one name in my Facebook account. This made it difficult for all of my friends to connect with me. I've even received messages from old friends asking who I was before they would approve my friend request because they didn't recognize my... name, even though the profile photo looked familiar to them.

Last week, we added the ability for you to display such alternate names on Facebook. Previously you could associate another name with your account, so friends who knew you by that name could find you in search results. Now, you can further choose to also display your alternate name so it is visible on your profile, in search results, in friend requests and on other places on the site. It also will appear in parenthesis alongside your primary name.



In addition to names in different languages, you may want to include an alternate name if you have a maiden name, a different married name or are otherwise known by more than one name.

To enter an alternate name, go to your "Account Settings" page here. Check the box for displaying your alternate name if you also want it to be shown on the site.



With this change, we hope that all of you with multiple names, in any language, will be able to connect with even more of your friends.


Sophia, who works on internationalization for Facebook, is excited to connect with more of her friends.

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不用再問我是誰

每個人至少都有一個名字，但是就是有些人的名字卻不止一個。很不巧，我就是其中的一個。在台灣渡過我的前半生，之後選擇浪跡四海；未來呢？還沒有人知道。因此多數台灣親朋好友、鄰家大叔大嬸、後巷裡的黑狗兄等等，識得的呢是本人的中文名號，周遊各地結識的朋友們，統一以我的英文名字稱呼我。其實，不管中文或英文名，這兩個名字還不都是我。只是到目前為止，在我的 Facebook 個人檔案上，我只能選擇叫 Sophia，或是淑慧，無奈的是，不管選擇哪個，總會有大半的朋友在 Facebook 上找不到或認不出我。一些陳年老友收到我的 Facebook 交友邀請，覺得徐娘半老的相片看起來真眼熟，可是就是想不出哪個朋友名叫 Sophia，還得想辦法客氣地旁敲側擊地找答案。


上週 Facebook 做了項人性化的改動，讓大家可以在 Facebook 上選擇同時顯示廣為人知的別名了。 其實，之前大家已經可以在帳號設定下中加入別名，不過這資料只會出現在朋友搜尋結果中，方便朋友搜尋辨認。從現在開始，除了搜尋結果之外，大家可以進一步決定是否將我們的別名也顯示在個人檔案、交友邀請、朋友推薦通知與其他地方等等，減少確認時的困惑。



除了中文、外文名字之外，婚後改名冠夫姓的、想補充娘家姓資料的或有其他別名的，都可以利用這個功能，讓朋友間的相認聯繫更輕鬆。

準備好輸入你的別名資料了嗎？只要到你的「帳號設定」頁面，輸入別名後，記得勾選「請同時顯示在我的個人檔案和搜尋結果」選項就行了。



希望這個功能的改良能夠協助許多像我一樣的朋友， 在 Facebook 找回更多失聯已久的朋友。


淑慧，Facebook 在地化經理，期待與更多的昔日好友重逢話當年。

Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath. Much of the content created and shared has been in Persian—the native language of Iran—but people have had to navigate the site in English or other languages.

Today we're making the entire site available in a beta version of Persian, so Persian speakers inside of Iran and around the world can begin using it in their native language.


...
If your browser is set to Persian, you should automatically see the Persian version of Facebook. If you'd like to change your language into Persian, go here, or click on the "Settings" link in the upper-right corner of any page and then go to the "Language" tab. You then can select the language you want from the drop-down menu.

We could not have made this happen so quickly without the more than 400 Persian speakers who submitted thousands of individual translations of the site. Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far. If you speak Persian or any language not yet completely translated, you can help as well by using the Translations application.


Eric is a Facebook engineer working to translate the site.