In a bid to expand their reach globally (and perhaps catch up to Facebook), Twitter is reaching out to the community in order to help translate their services into other languages beyond their current selection.
Today we’re announcing a product that is a major step toward making Twitter more easily accessible by people around the world – the Twitter Translation Center. The Translation Center allows us to crowdsource translations from our passionate users in order to more quickly launch Twitter in additional languages. […]
The new Translation Center allows any Twitter user to sign up, choose a language and begin translating immediately. Translators can now help localize twitter.com, mobile.twitter.com, Twitter for iPhone and iPad, Twitter for Android, Twitter Help and the Twitter Business Center. We also improved the Center’s search functionality, added phrase tagging, created special translator profiles, enabled commenting on phrases and much more. (Official Twitter Blog)
Surprisingly Twitter seems to have forgotten to mention their Windows Phone 7 app (which might be an oversight) although Blackberry owners will have to depend upon RIM for future translations (as the “official” app is not supported by Twitter).
Twitter currently is available in English, Japanese, Korean, as well as what is commonly referred to as “FIGS” (French, Italian, German and Spanish) by tech companies.
Twitter played a key role when it came to organizing protesters in Egypt (where Arabic is the official language), and by partnering with users they can help lower the barriers of entry for new users by ensuring that their is a service or site available in their mother tongue.
