Facebook now available in 101 languages

Facebook is becoming available in three new languages; Corsican, Fula and Maltese. With these three languages, Facebook is now available in 101 languages and now more than one billion people use Facebook in a language other than English.

According to Facebook, the mission is to give people the power to share and to make the world more open and connected and language is vital to connecting.

“We discovered this very early on in our history when Facebook was only available in English, but the people using Facebook were from all over the world. In 2007 we built a Translate Facebook app that enabled anyone to translate the Facebook interface into their own language.

“Over the years, a vibrant community has developed that is helping make Facebook available in languages from all over the world. What is particularly interesting about this community is that they have helped Facebook translate the service into nine languages that are on UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. These languages are the hardest languages to translate – there are fewer people speaking them and many of them oftentimes are not spoken in the home,” it stated.

The social media platform, whose founder, Mark Zuckerberg, visited Nigeria recently, noted that so much is carried through language – tradition, culture, different opinions, adding it is vital to have these languages in danger represented on Facebook because it opens up communication and connectedness to more people.