by CRISTINA FERNANDEZ-PEREDA
Observer staff
Feb. 20, 2008

Almost two million new users from around the world sign up for Facebook each week. Since Feb. 11, those who login from a Spanish-speaking country will see the site in their own language. In the next few weeks, French and German speaking users will have the same option.

WHAT FACEBOOK USERS SAID:
Brand Netty, United States
“I like the Spanish version because I’m really interested in Spanish and it helps me learn the language now that I navigate the network among Spanish people.”
Stephanie Guevara, Peru
“Honestly, I think Facebook in Spanish is not that well translated, and it’s not complete either. I tried switching to Spanish, but I prefer the English one.”
Daniel Hernado Pinto Sepulveda, Colombia
“It’s something that we needed, definitely. I think that the fact that Americans had to create a Spanish edition means that Spanish-speakers also have our space for both our culture and our language.”
Johanna Castaño, Colombia
“It’s the opportunity that lots of us needed. Using Facebook in Spanish for the first time means I can better communicate and use this site that opens up the world for us, our friends and contact people we had lost track of.”
Carmen Cecilia Molina, Panama.
“I think it’s effective for Spanish-speaking users, for those who do speak English or not. Because those who don’t can now use Facebook; and those who speak English, but love their first language, can use this wonderful tool, too. However, there’s something in particular that I don’t like and it’s that some of the translations are done literally and the sentences have lost some of their meaning. I would love for them to fix this. I still use Facebook in English for this reason.”
Vanessa Andrade, Venezuela
“I feel that part of the essence of Facebook is that it’s in English and I’m quite sure it will loose part of it now that we have it in Spanish too. Personally, I don’t like having it in Spanish, but we’ll have to wait and see what the public’s reaction is.”

About 60 percent of the social network’s users are outside the United States, according to Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook. The release of a Spanish version encourages new Spanish-speaking users around the world to join.

A week after the first release of a non-English edition of Facebook, new questions arise. What will be the future of the different editions? What uses will Spanish-speaking users find for the social network? How many of the 2.8 million current users in Spain and Latin America are going to switch their language preferences to Spanish?

“I think Facebook is going to try keeping the network as one site without splitting it depending on the languages, which is key to having one integrated network. If people separate according to the different languages, the network’s value will degrade,” said Emily Plant, member of the LINKS Center for Social Network Analysis.
User Sofia Galatas, from Spain, doesn’t like the different language editions.

“Everyone who doesn’t have English as first language is going to separate to have Facebook in their own language, and one of the advantages of Facebook is that there are people from everywhere without being divided by languages,” she said through Facebook’s email service.

Carlos Sanchez, who accesses the network from Spain, appreciates having the option to switch to Spanish, but he won’t.

“I’m already used to the English one, but I think it’s a good way of attracting more people to the site. Most of my friends didn’t use it because it was in English and that might change now,” he said in a conversation through the site.

Unlike Sanchez, Miguel Mayol bets that Facebook will continue to be a network of multilingual users that don’t need editions in their own language because they already speak English. “I think a minority will only have contacts and belong to groups that speak their language, but I don’t think there will be monolingual non-English speakers in Facebook. It will remain a social network for people with higher-education experience,” he said.

Facebook developpers decided that the translation of the entire site needed to be led by users. About 1,500 users added the translation application and submitted different translations of words and phrases like “Send a message” or “Profile” and then voted for the best ones. After a few weeks, users had agreed to describe, for example, the term “poke” as “dar un toque.”

Yishan Wong, director of engineering at Facebook, described the company’s concerns about the process on the Facebook Blog on Feb. 13.

“We weren’t quite sure ourselves, at first,” said Wong. “Everyone’s familiar with the possibility of vandalism on Wikipedia, so we wondered if the same might happen on Facebook - that’s why we implemented the voting system - but surely, we thought, our users would want to make sure their own experience on Facebook was a good one.”

As Wong described, Facebook hired professional translators to provide glossaries, style guides and other materials. The team didn’t publish the translations until checking all the submissions. Also, Facebook wanted these translators to do it “professionally, just in case,” Wong posted.

Photo courtesy of Facebook.
Facebook has 65 million active users. 2.8 million
are Spanish-speakers from Spain and Latin America.

“It’s very interesting that Facebook asked users to participate in the translation of the site. That way they don’t feel as getting a second class version of the site and, hopefully, that will pay off for them to get new Spanish-speaking users,” Plant said.

Jeff Ruff, from Philadelphia and currently living in Madrid, Spain, likes that the translation process was open to anyone who wanted to participate in it. “I think it’s great that we now have Facebook in Spanish. So many people speak Spanish worldwide, and there are also lots of Spanish-speakers in the United States, so I think it’s fair to have it in both languages,” Ruff Said.

One of the questions now is how many Spanish speakers are going to use Facebook. The company’s intention is to internationalize the site that started in the United States as a college network and then expanded. However, only 2 percent of Spanish universities have their own social networks.

“It takes a while to build up the use of a site among a different group. However, we can see that people from other countries are following the same trends as American users: they are catching up with peer groups already on the site,” Plant said.

The use of social networks in different countries depends on how these sites started. Facebook started in the United States as a college network. In Spain and Latin America, users accessed Facebook when they knew of an American friend who was already on the site and also had to wait until the network became public.

“It’s very probable that now Spanish-speaking users who also speak English will start having contacts among demographically different groups. The fact that Facebook was in English probably stopped some Spanish-speakers from using it, but the Spanish edition is now the starting point: the network only needs a good amount of users to explode,” said Isidro Maya, Social Psychology Professor at University of Sevilla, in Spain, and director of REDES, the Hispanic magazine for the analysis of social networks.

Users outside the United States have had different social networks such as MySpace or Friendster, in addition to more local ones, such as Tuenti, in Spanish and with more privacy options than Facebook; Orkut, Google’s social network, which experienced a surprisingly rapid growth in Brazil, and HI5, the most popular networking site in Latin America.
Nico Vera, Facebook’s Privacy Eingeneer, posted on the Facebook Blog on February 11, about the new edition’s release.

“In just a couple of days we have seen a significant growth in the number of users that have joined Facebook from countries in España and America Latina, including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela,” he said.

Paul Montenegro, a user from Costa Rica, explained, in a conversation through the site, how some Spanish-speakers prefer MySpace to Facebook because it’s more
“Spanish friendly” and now hopes that they will join him on Facebook: “It’s going to be great for those Latinos that are in the verge of just learning English and or are in another country. I hope family memebers and other friends will join and be part of the more mature adult atmosphere,” he said.

Plant defends that Facebook’s intention is to get the market other networks have gained outside the United States.

“Friendster was very successful among Spanish-speakers, and MySpace too, but Facebook is growing much faster. Being the first to have the application doesn’t mean that you’ll win in the end.”