Et tu, Zuckerberg? Latin translation comes to Facebook

It's complicated.

So just how do you say "poke" in Latin? It's "puncti," according to Facebook's newest language translation. The supposedly "dead" language--O.K., so the Others on "Lost" speak it sometimes--debuted as an official translation on the social network on Friday.

"Latin has joined the more than 70 languages we've made available on the site in the past two years, including some which have launched just today--Azeri, Faroese, Georgian and Nepali," a post on the company blog by Facebook's Elizabeth Linder read. "Some of these are languages that millions of people speak across the globe. Others are dialects that specific communities use in select geographic areas. Still others are just for fun: 'Pirate' may not appeal to everyone, but for those nostalgic for the days of Blackbeard and Captain Hook, it's there for you."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg notably studied both ancient Greek and Latin in high school; interviews have said that when he enrolled at Harvard, which he ended up dropping out of to run Facebook full-time, he considered studying classics rather than computer science.

Most of Facebook's translations have been "crowdsourced" by users. Latin was a volunteer effort, too, according to the blog post, which must have been quite the operation considering the likes of Cicero and Ovid probably didn't use the term "news feed" colloquially.

"To students of Latin, the availability of the language on Facebook may be just what's needed to narrow the distance between themselves and the venerable language," Linder's post wrote. "While students of 'living languages' practice on subtitled films and in conversation groups, on vacations and with exchange students, Latin scholars soak in rare living breaths of their studied language, satisfying themselves with the occasional legal phrase, nursery plant, benediction or school motto."

Conveniently, that ubiquitous Facebook term "status" is the same in English and in Latin.

[MrZook]

I used Pirate for a while, but it got on my nerves. Latin should prove to be too much a challenge.

[Me-Ruud]

Great news, I studies Latin and Greek in my High School too, and this is a great way to (as said above) "narrow the distance between themselves and the venerable language".

[Me-Ruud]

Great news, I studied Latin and Greek in my High School too, and this is a great way to (as said above) "narrow the distance between themselves and the venerable language".

[joyofsomeone]

Well, seeing as from next week onwards, i'm taking latin at high school, this could actually be useful... Win :P

[Comp-phan]

Just out of curiosity, they never planned to do anything in Klingon have they?

[allanmillar125]

I believe in social service. Who believe in humanity they should believe in social service also. so goodness can alive.

[elo888]

I love how the facebook brand includes the concept of user-generated ideas, applications, etc. But an even more fundamental feature of the facebook brand is that of keeping control in the hands of the users. (I think that facebook has the most elaborate system of privacy settings I have seen on any social networking site.)

<a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/29/jailbaitgallery-mylife-facebook-technology-internet-pictures.html">Reports that users' pictures have been used on a jailbait site have been met with apathy by Facebook...</a>, just as <a href="http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2009/03/22/brand-winners-and-losers-obama-and-facebook.aspx">when facebook received complaints from users after its last major over-haul, it disregarded its target market's concerns.</a>

This attitude does Not represent a good marketing strategy.

[elo888]

I love how the facebook brand includes the concept of user-generated ideas, applications, etc. But an even more fundamental feature of the facebook brand is that of keeping control in the hands of the users. (I think that facebook has the most elaborate system of privacy settings I have seen on any social networking site.)
Reports that users' pictures have been used on a jailbait site have been met with apathy by Facebook - http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/29/jailbaitgallery-mylife-facebook-technology-internet-pictures.html - just as when facebook received complaints from users after its last major over-haul, it disregarded its target market's concerns. http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/2009/03/22/brand-winners-and-losers-obama-and-facebook.aspx
This attitude does Not represent a good marketing strategy.

[aeisha1]

i wish this app had been around when i was in high school taking latin.