Facebook’s translation feature allows you to view Facebook posts and comments in different languages. This can be useful if you have friends who post in languages you don’t understand, or if you want to practice reading and writing in another language.
Should I use Facebook’s translation feature?
Facebook’s translation tool can provide a rough translation of foreign language posts. However, machine translation is imperfect and may miss nuances or result in awkward phrasing. For casual social media use, Facebook’s translator is fine, but for important communications it’s better to use a professional human translator.
How to turn on translation in Facebook
Turning on translation is easy! Just follow these steps:
- Access your Facebook News Feed
- Click on the globe icon in the bottom right corner of a post. This is the translation button.
- Select the language you want to translate the post to from the drop-down menu.
The original post will now show the translated text above it. The original text remains visible underneath so you can toggle between the languages.
How to always translate a language
If you always want posts in a particular language translated, you can set your language preferences:
- Go to your Facebook Settings
- Click on “Language” in the left sidebar
- Under “Facebook language,” select “Add a language”
- Search for and select the language you want to always translate
Now posts in that language will be automatically translated for you every time!
Translating comments
You can also translate comments on Facebook. Just look for the translation icon on each comment and select the language you want that comment translated to.
How accurate is Facebook’s translation?
Facebook uses artificial intelligence software to power translations. It looks at patterns in thousands of translated documents to try to determine the best translation in context.
The accuracy depends heavily on the language. In general, translating between European languages that use the Latin alphabet results in fewer errors. Translating Asian languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean is more difficult for machine translation.
Here is a rough ranking of Facebook’s translation accuracy by language:
| Language | Translation Accuracy |
|---|---|
| Spanish | 95% accurate |
| French | 93% accurate |
| German | 92% accurate |
| Italian | 91% accurate |
| Portuguese | 89% accurate |
| Russian | 85% accurate |
| Chinese | 65% accurate |
| Japanese | 60% accurate |
| Arabic | 55% accurate |
As you can see, translation accuracy varies widely. Again, machine translation cannot fully replace human translation for important communications.
Limitations of Facebook’s translation
Keep these limitations of Facebook’s translator in mind:
- It may miss slang, jokes, sarcasm, and cultural references
- Errors are more common for distant language pairs like English-Chinese
- It struggles with posts containing multiple languages
- Translations may sound unnatural although the meaning is conveyed
Is Facebook’s translation secure?
Facebook claims text is only translated temporarily and not stored on their servers. The original text remains private and is not shared with Facebook, according to their statements.
However, some privacy advocates have raised concerns about whether Facebook’s translation access could allow gathering of user data or usage patterns.
Tips for using Facebook translation safely
- Be wary about writing private or sensitive information if using translation
- Review your language settings periodically
- Be aware that translations will never be perfectly accurate
Can I help Facebook improve translations?
Yes! If you notice an incorrect or poor translation, you can report it to Facebook. Look for the “give feedback” link near the translated text. Or go to your Facebook Settings – Language to submit feedback.
Facebook uses this feedback to continually tweak their machine learning algorithms and improve translation quality over time.
Other Facebook translation features
In addition to translating posts and comments, Facebook’s translation capabilities allow you to:
- View your News Feed in multiple languages
- Translate Marketplace listings
- Translate notifications and emails from Facebook
- Have Page posts automatically translated to reach bigger audiences
Third party translation apps
There are also third party apps you can connect to Facebook to add enhanced translation functionality:
1. Beelinguapp
Beelinguapp connects with your Facebook account to translate posts sentence by sentence. It highlights the translation word-for-word so you can learn while reading.
2. Waygo Visual Translator
Waygo’s camera translation lets you scan and instantly translate Chinese characters in Facebook posts as you view them.
3. iTranslate
iTranslate is an offline neural machine translator. The browser add-on enhances the translations you see on Facebook.
Is Facebook working on improving translation?
Yes, Facebook is continually refining its artificial intelligence to improve translation capabilities. They are working on:
- Reducing translation errors
- Increasing the number of language pairs
- Making translations sound more natural
- Detecting sarcasm, slang, jokes, and wordplay
Facebook is also exploring ways to allow multilingual posts in a single feed. Overall, they are committed to breaking down language barriers and connecting people globally.
Conclusion
Facebook’s translate feature provides a handy way to get the gist of foreign language posts and comments. While imperfect, it can give you insight into what your international friends are saying.
Enable translation if you have Facebook friends who post in multiple languages. But take the translations with a grain of salt, as they lack nuance and may contain errors.
For casual social media use, Facebook’s translator is convenient. But rely on professional human translators for important communications where accuracy is vital.
By reporting any incorrect translations you encounter, you can do your part to help Facebook refine its translation tool over time. As artificial intelligence capabilities grow, translation quality will continue improving.