Google, Facebook rush Iranian language support

Twitter has the starring role as opening up Net communications about Iran's turbulent politics, but Google and Facebook are jumping in with their its own hasty efforts.

Google is adding Farsi, or Persian, language support to its translation service, the company announced Thursday night. Google rushed out the support specifically because of events in Iran, said Principal Scientist Franz Och in a blog posting.

Google used its YouTube blog to spotlight often violent conflicts between Iranian police and protesters.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

"We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran," Och said. "Like YouTube and other services, Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa--increasing everyone's access to information."

And Facebook produced a beta version of its social-networking site in Persian, Facebook localization engineer Eric Kwan said in a blog posting.

"Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath. Much of the content created and shared has been in Persian--the native language of Iran--but people have had to navigate the site in English or other languages," Kwan said. "We could not have made this happen so quickly without the more than 400 Persian speakers who submitted thousands of individual translations of the site."

Google's translation service so far is optimized for translating between English and Farsi, but Google is working on expanding that to support other language combinations, Och said. A quick test for me showed it workable translating Persian to English.

The Internet lowers barriers between different cultures, countries, and languages, but censors can seriously curtail access to Internet services. Of course, there often are ways to sidestep censors for those with some technical know-how.

Google also has spotlighted citizen journalist efforts on YouTube to document the crackdown on Iranian protesters.

Google has struggled with censorship in China in particular, concluding that censorship cooperation is better than not participating in the market at all.

[DarkxFuneral]

Thank you Google, thank you Facebook we appreciate your help.
Great work!!!...

[hankthedwarf]

This is awesome of Facebook, Google and the entire freedom-loving (REAL freedom, not the political byline that pundits love to spew chronically) internet community.

[assman]

See how much the iranian protesting helped push the status of Iran forward internationally? Pretty much the opposite of what that dipshit supreme leader Ayatollah said today. Hope the Iranian people don't take him too seriously.

[rubenerd]

These events do help put many of our developed world problems into perspective don't they?

I've been a Twitter user since early 2007 but this is the first time I've been proud to be a part of it (you could read that many ways, but you know what I mean!)

[m.afshari]

Thanks to Google, Facebook and Twitter!

[navnet01]

The language is called Persian, not "Farsi".

It's amazing how a single uneducated person working for Fox, or NYT, or BBC can have so much influence in propagating incorrect information like this.

[InklingBooks]

Nice to know that Google can play ball on the side of democracy. Personally, I haven't noticed that much "struggle" in Google's China policies. For the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square in early June, they anticipated what the Chinese government wanted them to do and did it. I'd be more impressed if they did what Bulgaria did under German occupation--play dumb, incredibly dumb. "Duh, you mean there was an anniversary of something this week. Gee, we didn't realize that. I mean with the new iPhone coming out and all, we got kinda distracted."

A bit of history: The Nazis ordered all Bulgarian Jews rounded up and 'relocated' into ghettos in major cities where they'd be easier to transport to death camps. The Bulgarian leaders pretended to misunderstand the meaning of 'relocate,' and ordered all Jews out of the cities into hundreds of small villages, where the Bulgarian people hid them. The result was that 80% of Bulgaria's Jews survived the Holocaust and most of the remaining 20% were in areas of the country that the Bulgarian government did not control. That's playing dumb.

And it is refreshing to see that for once conservatives, libertarians, and liberals have found common cause in aiding the Iranian people, along with the leaders of Germany and France who refreshingly aren't defending the status quo in the Middle East this time. (Maybe they did learn something from Iraq.) The only laggard seems to be Obama, who seems captivated by the image of himself flying into Teheran to meet with the man only he refers to as the nation's "Supreme Leader."

Too bad the Romans aren't around to revolt against an evil emperor like Nero. I've been trying for over a year to get Google Translate to include Latin. Books from a century and more ago are filled with Latin phrases, which they assume any literate person could understand.

[lazycat202]

i'm so glad that i'm living in USA.
freedom of speech and freedom of expression