[BRIEF NOTE] Finally, Facebook in French
Mar. 14th, 2008 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldLaura Drake in the Ottawa Citizen recently reported on the news that, at long last, Facebook is available in French.
Facebook use may well increase among Canadian Francophones as a result. Although Facebook has achieved deeper penetration in Canada than in the United States, in Montreal Facebook use was substantially lower than in English Canadian centers as early as April 2007. This trend continued in November 2007 with evidence that Montreal and Québec City have significantly lower adoption rates than English Canadian communities of similar size. Interestingly, Patrick Bellerose at Infopresse reports that a February 2008 poll suggests that 28% of adult Francophones in Québec--947 540 according to the pollers' overprecise estimates--are members of Facebook, but that "on the island of Montréal, 37% of Francophones say that they are members of Facebook, against 21% of poll participants outside of the metropolis." This suggests to me that Montréal Francophones are more influenced in their online social networking choices by their city's very large Anglophone community than their colinguals elsewhere in the province.
Even in January 2008 statistics suggest that Montréal continued to lag behind Toronto on a per capita ratio. Montréal's city network still has more registered members than New York City's members, mind, but still, there's clearly some work that needs to be done if Facebook is to completely saturate both solitudes. Vas-y!
Many bleary-eyed francophones who opened Facebook on Monday morning likely had to blink several times -- or maybe thought they were dreaming -- when they saw their pages staring back at them in their mother tongue.
"That's really funny to see Facebook in French," said François Picard as he looked at his new profile "en français" for the first time. "It looks pretty good, as far as I can see."
If it looks good, it's due to the 4,000 French-speaking Facebook users who did the work of professional translators.
French-speaking users around the world were invited to use a company-developed application -- the same one used to create the Spanish and German versions released earlier this year -- that allowed them to translate the site while using it. Translations were then voted on by other people using the application.
In that way, the social networking site was changed into French while maintaining the quirks to which Facebook users are intimately attached, explained Alban Martin, one of the people invited to translate the site and the author of a book on how to use Facebook that will be released in France in April.
Poking, for example, is a Facebook concept that defies any kind of traditional definition, so instead of trying to find an equivalent French phrase, it was translated to "envoyer un poke."
"It's a new light on Facebook. I'm sure we'll see new people who were put off by the website in English joining now," Mr. Alban said yesterday from his home in Paris.
Facebook use may well increase among Canadian Francophones as a result. Although Facebook has achieved deeper penetration in Canada than in the United States, in Montreal Facebook use was substantially lower than in English Canadian centers as early as April 2007. This trend continued in November 2007 with evidence that Montreal and Québec City have significantly lower adoption rates than English Canadian communities of similar size. Interestingly, Patrick Bellerose at Infopresse reports that a February 2008 poll suggests that 28% of adult Francophones in Québec--947 540 according to the pollers' overprecise estimates--are members of Facebook, but that "on the island of Montréal, 37% of Francophones say that they are members of Facebook, against 21% of poll participants outside of the metropolis." This suggests to me that Montréal Francophones are more influenced in their online social networking choices by their city's very large Anglophone community than their colinguals elsewhere in the province.
Even in January 2008 statistics suggest that Montréal continued to lag behind Toronto on a per capita ratio. Montréal's city network still has more registered members than New York City's members, mind, but still, there's clearly some work that needs to be done if Facebook is to completely saturate both solitudes. Vas-y!
