Video: Facebook’s Spanish Translation Misses the Mark (4:20)
I interviewed Maria and Aaron Contente, who are both native Spanish speakers from Mexico, educated, and are successful professionals in Silicon Valley. Maria Contente manages many of the relationships with our clients at Forrester in Silicon Valley and Aaron is an engineer at a large industrial company.
After enjoying a home cooked Mexican meal (and a spicy cocktail), I asked them for their honest feedback on Facebook’s recent Spanish release. Watch the video to find out that the new version reads awkward.
Apparently, Facebook outsourced some of the translations to the members, in a crowdsourcing effort of 1500 members, but in some cases there’s no substitute for having a professional translator. Apparently, a French version will soon be released, let’s hope the translation fares better than this Spanish one.
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Hi Jeremiah!
I’m a Spanish speaker from Spain and I do agree with María and Aaron. Even though you have to bare in hand that Spanish from Mexico is very different from the one spoke in Spain. Even though, the translation seems too artificial to me. Some words can’t be translated without sounding pretty lame. For example, the wall = muro. Even though it’s the correct translation, it’s feels just so stupid. In English there is like an implicit meaning of the wall where you put graffitis, in Spanish is just pretty weird to read that. Apart from that, some of my applications weren’t working in Spanish (for example the Twitter application), so I switched back to English.
Hi there,
Great Article!! (found it from twitter tho!)
I’m spanish, I’m a reader and I’m work on the IT industry, so I think I can give you a hand here.
I agree that Facebook’s translation was very poorly done for Spanish, and its not an aisle example of bad localization.
First, we should distinguish between internationalization and Localization in this context.
I think facebook did a good job in Internationalization, but we can’t say that for their localization efforts.
I have helped translating some openSource applications into Spanish before, and the fact is that translating huge applications into a new language can make you really tired. Small variations of the same sentences and words appear throughout the infinite list of words.
This kind of activities should be done by a well coordinated team, which sets a standard to translate words in a coherent, market-related and uniform way.
One last remark, this issue have been way back in history -yeah, even before facebook- and there are already processes, organizations and standards to achieve this. See the famous Marketing Mis-translations as an example.
Verdict: Guilty of negligence
I disagree in a few points with Maria and Aaron. First of all, its a difficut job to translate so many “web 2.0″ words that are being used nowdays… it just doesnt exist words to do exact translations. I can tell by experience because my blog is in spanish and i usually write about these subjects, plus i have the same dilemma everytime i want to tag a site in spanish in my del.icio.us… i endup using english everytime :S
So, to be specific, “Media Social” wont be the right word to define “Social Media” … that would actually mean “social socks” in spanish. Its true that “herramienta social” doesnt exactly represent the real meaning, but at least it’s closer. Herramienta is not only a hammer… in the consulting world, “herramienta” is used -a lot- to help define an useful tool to help you achieve something. To prove my point just take a look at a google search on “media social” and you wont find not even one article in spanish. On another hand, do the same search on “herramienta social” and it cant be a coincidence that the first result is the wikipedia page for Social Network (close enough i would say).
On another hand, spanish is the most diverse language… even in just one country you can have dozens of variations… each region has their own jargon… so I wouldnt agree either that the right translation should neccesarily come from Spain. If we’re looking for the perfect solution it should be implementing locale arguments to match the right language file according to your country… pretty much as most open source CMS work: es_AR (Spanish Argentina), es_BO (Spanish Bolivia), es_CL (Spanish Chile), es_ES (Spanish Spain) and so on…
Facebook does indeed as awckard translation, such as: “Actualizaciones de estado”, (agree with the) “formacion y trabajo”, “Crea una Insignia de Perfil” and (this one is the best: a new verb was just born) “¡Facebookéame!”
cheers!
Hi Jeremiah,
About me: I am also a native Spanish speaker who is originally from Honduras. I moved to the US to get a B.Sc. (1996) when I was 18 and then went to grad school in Canada and have lived here ever since. I speak both languages at home, 100% Spanish with my son, and 100% English with my husband.
I don’t agree with Maria’s comments made regarding the use of the word “herramienta” it translates literally to the word “tool” and that’s what it is. I think the issue is that probably in Mexico it is used in a more industrial setting, but for the most part it simply means a tool which can be used in either context. Changing it to “medio social” changes the message to “social medium” which is still not social utility as Facebook originally wrote in English.
There are however several of the feature descriptions in the next paragraph that don’t make any sense like “sube fotos”, which is their translation for upload images but really is read more like “lift images”. The translation for “tag your friends” which they used “etiqueta a tus amigos” is also quite poor and makes no sense to me. The word tag is literally translated to etiqueta, but in my opinion doesn’t flow as well to mean an internet tag. I actually couldn’t come up with a better word off the top of my head, and this is why my suggestion would be that Facebook get someone with perhaps a marketing background, who speaks both languages and who can convey messaging in both. I think Facebook has translated all the words of the site, but not the message. No need to review the entire site, but at the very least the homepage and some of the pod headers.
I don’t agree with using Spanish from Spain, to me that would be like getting someone from the UK to translate Facebook in English. While the UK English might be the proper one, it only appeals to a small percentage of the users. There is a slang free version, of proper Spanish, which is used in most textbooks and leaves little room for interpretation. Same as English, when yuo read a good translation, you can’t tell where the person is from.
Crowdsourcing in a language like Spanish works for sections in which the literal transalation is good enough, but not where the message is key.
I’m sure you’ll get an opinion for every country in Latin America, so I’m looking forward to reading them all.
Thanks to you and your friends for starting the conversation.
Veronica
Veronica truth is I didn’t mean to get FB translated into Spanish from Spain. I just wanted to note that Spanish differs A LOT from one country to another. Mexican Spanish has nothing to do with the one spoke in Argentina or in Spain.
There should be different Spanish translations as you find in Firefox for example. There is an es_AR from Argentina and an es_ES from Spain. The same should apply here.
Hi Alex,
I agree about the different translations for different countries, Yahoo does the same. My comment about the Spanish from Spain was to Maria’s suggestion, not your own. And I completely agree with you and the term “muro” it’s awkward and a big part of the site which needs a catchy name like “wall”.
I think it’s not a bad start, just not sure the translation offers any real value.
Veronica
Come on guys… “Formación” is a perfectly valid term, and much more encompassing than education, as it includes all those experiences that have helped mold your professional self. It’s used throughout the Spanish world in that precise context.
“Herramienta” is not just a tool in the sense of a hammer (or anything else in a toolbox). And it’s certainly not a machete. Yes, perhaps “Social Medium” could be a better term, but we’re splitting hairs here between good and better.
There are some typos throughout the website and some areas that have yet to be translated, but at first glance it looks pretty good. A one-off Spanish translation will never please every one: Spanish differs (sometimes a whole lot) from country to country.
I’m sure translation services companies are not thrilled about Facebook’s use of their user base to translate the website, but that’s another story…
I admire the spirit of Facebook’s “crowdsourcing” approach, but I also knew many Spanish speakers would be disappointed with its results. As someone who works for the world’s leading website translation company, I’m very familiar with the woes of regionalisms and the challenges of proper word choice.
Translation is an invisible art: it only works when the reader doesn’t notice it — and professional translators are best-equipped to craft that. My company advocates “universal” translations that are free of regionalisms; this ensures that readers from many countries/regions can seamlessly understand the text and enjoy the experience.
Jeremiah is correct here: there is no substitute for professional translations, particularly on such a high profile site as Facebook.
THe problem with the computer related terms is that there is no common place for it. Its quite hard and sometimes, for me, require a traslation back to english to understand it. This made quite hard to have just one single spanish translation. Since the navigators have information about the Spanish country you want to have (for example i am Spain-spanish so it is es_es location) they should work on a multilingual spanish version. We have face this problem on teleducation sites and there is no way round it.
Also i think that the crowsourcing approach its no good for a platform like this. They should spend some money on some profesional translators.
I was raised bilingually in French and English and this problem will exist in the French version too. The difference between “amateur” and “pro” translation will be evident on all but the smallest products.
Top of the top companies I’ve seen for this are Disney and McDonald’s. Having watched Disney animated features in French and English, they put a lot of effort into getting this right.
McDonald’s “I’m loving it” campaign is also an excellent example of this. The French version uses “j’M” for the word “j’aime” which translates to “I like” OR “I love” (interesting language quirk). The capital M in the French version can be styled with the McLogo and there’s no comprehension lost here. The whole thing (“c’est ce que j’M”) would roughly translate to “it’s what I like/love”, which would sucks in English, but actually sounds good in French.
Untrusted amateur translators won’t come up with this stuff. The “wall” will become “mur”, which is a French homonym for “ripe” and will all sound wrong.
Gates, excellent examples. A proper translation of the website would involve reworking some areas and functions to adapt them to local cultures - as well as an in-depth knowledge of each one. (You’d be surprised at the Spanish translations littered around Miami - horrible stuff).
But I’m not sure that’s what Facebook was after with their Translation Application.
Jeremiah, thank you for your post and your comment on my blog.
We professional translators urgently need independent professionals like you to assess the merits of this kind of exercise.
I agree with Gates about McDonald’s, but not with the ‘mur’ comment; ‘ripe’ is ‘mûr’(with an accent), ‘wall’ is ‘mur’ (without an accent), but in France, it’s forbidden to write on walls… ;))
An innocent function like the Wall could thus take us very far, and that’s only the beginning. The English language lends itself to the creation of powerful slogans and concepts out of very simple language, but you really have to apply your brains to find equally-powerful phrases in foreign languages.
I’ll stop here…
Hello Everyone,
I am Maria Contente, the lady that Jeremiah interviewed.
Thanks all for you comments, I appreciate and respect everyone’s different opinions. The beautiful thing is that at the end of the day, we all agree that Facebook should or should have spent more money, time and energy on some professional translators especially with Facebook being such a high profile site.
Having lived in Mexico for 19 yrs, I just get upset when I see large corporations trying to market their products to the Hispanic population in such poor manner. If
Hispanics help the economy so much and are so important that large corporations target us and spend the time to translate to Spanish, companies should take the time to build, allocate and recruit the right people to do this.
Buena Suerte!
Maria (Aaron)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with the community, and following up here in the comments.
It’s important we have a global view on the web, business, and life, and you’ve really helped to enrich my blog, the readers, and the community.
Please swing by anytime again to chime in.
[…] Localization: Facebook launches in Spanish, crowdsources translation Facebook releases it’s first language specific version of it’s site, in Spanish, a logical first language choice to pick. I’ve seen other social networks localize to different languages, but until you understand it’s culture, you can’t expect success from simply rewiring the navigation in another language –every culture is different. In this case it looks like they’ve crowdsourced the translation to the community, let’s see if it works. See video from users, a critique. […]
my first impression of Facebook’s spanish translation is that it sounds like a literal translation from english
most of the translation seems to be correct, but forced, in a way a natural spanish speaker wouldn’t write about 13 hours ago from im in reply to jowyang Icon_star_empty Icon_trash
also hard to use in spanish if some parts are translated, but most apps are not about
Facebook should provide a translation platform for their app developers so apps can be translated too
that’s the only reasonable way to take it global for real, can’t even think of translating it into chinese as it is now
As they say, you only get what you pay for
Can’t Facebook afford professional translators or don’t they take non-English speakers seriously enough to think they should spend some money on them?
“1500″ is indeed an impressive number, but of course one should not mistake quantity for quality!
[…] Regarding Facebook’s Spanish translation, web marketing expert Jeremiah Owyang has just posted a video on his blog aptly enough titled: “Facebook’s Spanish Translation Misses the Mark“. […]
[…] does have a blog, but it’s rarely updated and often ridiculed. The decisions Facebook makes often misses the mark and opens up a world of criticism and controversy. Over the past year the company has dealt with […]
Thanks very much for this insightful post; as a certified translator and member of the American Translators Association, the public’s lack of understanding about the value and role of professional translators is a constant frustration. Facebook’s effort to reach out to non-English speakers is admirable, but a sloppy translation, as a previous comment points out, makes it appear that Facebook is either unwilling to pay for professional translation services or unconcerned with the image that a poorly-done translation conveys.
[…] multilingual websites are in general a good thing, kudos to web strategist Jeremiah Owyang for calling social media powerhouse Facebook on its use of “crowdsourcing” rather than professional […]
As a professional translator, I can only rejoice at the conclusions arrived at in this video. I totally agree with Maria and Aaron’s views.
I personally prefer MySpace’s way of going global. TechCrunch seems to have opted for the “slowly but surely method” - they have a very good French version, a UK version, and a Japanese version (unfortunately I don’t know any Japanese).
Surprisingly, some famous bloggers resort to Machine Translation without any postediting, which generally produces disastrous outcomes!
BTW, is Web-strategist thinking of going global (at least partially, like a Spanish, Chinese, French, or German version…). I can assure you you have many fans outside of the US
Amadou
I would love to go global, but I don’t have the resources to translate this blog.
Yes, I agree that there is no real substitute for a professional translator, however that doesn’t mean that the way Facebook translates it is wrong. It should be common sense that “Media Social” is the same as “Social Media”. Also, “herramienta” which they use for “tool” makes perfect sense, Facebook is a Social Tool that connects you to your friends on cyberspace. Facebook does not target one specific group to market. (If they did, it would probably be to the English speakers due to the fact that it is an English based company).
I’m agreeing on the last comment (and one at the start :P) The terms “Herramienta Social” fits to what they are trying to say. I mean, maybe in Mexico its used in a more toolbox-way but not in the other countries. We use that word not only for services but software.
Writing from Peru