Comments on: Facebook In Polish – Renovated By Cowboys

By: jobie12345678

jobie12345678 — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:08:48 +0000

The future will either be really bad with the technology or really good. I see it as good. Global peace will be through global community. This is just another step in that direction :)

By: Liza

Liza — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:36:37 +0000

I think computers and the internet has become overefficient -- I experience the same annoyance when my microsoft word automatically spells out a word for me -- when I was trying to write something entirely different. Facebook should wait for an opt-in from the user, so that translations would be wanted and accepted. Google Advertising Ireland .

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:40:23 +0000

Sorry Andy I must have had forgotten to close my link above. I meant only to link to my site about Polish language not to spam by making my whole comment a link. Your blog is high quality and did not mean to do that. PS you should blog more about your experience living in Poland an with the Polish language. I think there are many ex pats all over the world who have an interest in the internet experience connected with languages other than English.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:23:39 +0000

Living in Poland also I am mildly annoyed that maybe applications and website just assume I am a native speaker and default to Polish. Its my fault for not being an expert on Polish. Even though I have a Polish grammar site, I am not an expert, I am very good but I still prefer English. For anyone who wants a fast and dirty translation I recommend google translate. This is my opinion, from an English native speaker that lives in Poland.

By: Dennis Edell

Dennis Edell — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 21:33:48 +0000

There’s not much worse then off-beat translations…to say nothing of completely wrong as in the case you pointed out.

Claudine hit the point with possible massive embarrassment, or worse.

By: Cassiano Travareli

Cassiano Travareli — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:40:33 +0000

“Facebook isn’t an open source project with limited resources”

This phrase said everything! Many bugs are fixed by users when the system is an open source!

By: Sleep Aid

Sleep Aid — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:20:30 +0000

Yeah, I think they can do better too. You would think for what the company is worth they could hire someone to do the translations.

By: Daan Jansonius

Daan Jansonius — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:25:39 +0000

I said this was a bad idea when I first found out about it ( http://www.taxidrivermarketing.com/?p=19 ).

Like you say, it can create strong brand loyalty, but in my opinion this mainly works for smaller communities. When a company has just received a pot of gold from Microsoft it just seems like they are being cheap to ask the members to translate.

With all the new languages rolled out they obviously found the people to do it for them, but if they let mistakes slip through like the ones you mention they’ve been even cheaper then I thought.

And I know about cheap, I’m Dutch!

By: Claudine

Claudine — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:20:34 +0000

I think that they can do better. They need to hire a professional team of translators/editors to review the work to make sure that it is correct. Some of the mistakes could be extremely embarrassing.

By: John Gillett

John Gillett — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:47:16 +0000

Thanks for the translation insights…It’s very interesting how the Web and social media sites are dealing with a global audience. Perhaps esparanto is in the future of global web communicators…