The Facebook Blog

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.

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.


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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.