Globalizing Twitter This little bird flies a long way //twitpic.com/1m5ou4 – @Astro_Soichi.
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Transcript of Globalizing Twitter This little bird flies a long way //twitpic.com/1m5ou4 – @Astro_Soichi.
Globalizing TwitterThis little bird flies a long way
http://twitpic.com/1m5ou4 – @Astro_Soichi
Feedback
• Reply to me on Twitter: @mzsanford• Email me: [email protected]• Or, talk to me afterward.
"It's real, human interaction. It ain't gonna hurt you."
- @mchammer
Agenda
• Twitter’s non-US Popularity• Growth & Localization
– Case Studies: Japan and Chile
• Technical Hurdles• Community Translation
– The Good, The Bad & The In-between.
Twitter’s International Growth
Up, Up, And Away
70% of Twitter users are outside of the US
June 2009 September 2010
Twitter has 150 million registered users and
Case Study: Japan
Localization efforts in progress
Daily Tweeters
Japanese Mobile Follow Me
Mobile in Japan: Galapagos Phones
• New mobile web site specifically for Japan– Localizing our app was difficult and fragile– This is one of the benefits of an open API– Restrictions (for the more technical):
• Emoji support• No cookies, no SSL
• Working with mobile phone carriers for built-in clients that meet user expectations
Case Study: Chile“Twitter is about the triumph of humanity, not the triumph of technology”
– @biz
Twitter Signups in Chile
About Those Sign-ups …
• Almost 100% are using Spanish as their language
• They were not talking about breakfast foods:– URGENTE en Constitución apareció IVAN LARA DE 8 AÑOS QUE ESTÁ
ABANDONADO en esa ciudad...busca parientes en todo Chile favor copiar y pegar
– Urgent. In Constitución an eight-year old boy named Ivan Lara showed up alone. He's looking for his family
Technical HurdlesTranslation isn’t enough.Neither are great feature ideas.It all has to work.
Character Counting“If you base a product on a character count, you better get it right”
— @mzsanford
Don’t count bytes
Don’t count Code Points
味 U+5473
UTF-8: 0xE5 0x91 0xB3 (3 bytes) UTF-16: 0x54 0x73 (2 bytes)1 human character
e é é=+U+0065 U+0301 U+0065
U+0301U+00E9
or
A Few Technical Lessons
• Ruby 1.8 (our programming language) lacks solid international support
• MySQL will not store all Unicode characters– Despite calling it “utf8”– Options: Store text as a ‘blob’, or use some other storage.
• Unicode Security– Ask me about directionality change phishing!
• See: http://bit.ly/locworld-unicode-security
• Many, many more.
Community TranslationWhy we chose it.How we do it.What works.What doesn’t.
Why Community Translation?
• We had no budget– We were, and very much still are, a start-up.
• We are committed to user involvement, even in the features and language we use
• Our users know our tone and both our users and employees are passionate that we keep that– We have a large pool of subject-matter expert translators.
• We had tried traditional translation and it didn’t mesh well with our release cycle– Twitter.com is released several times a day.
What Works Well?
• Inline translation• Multi-level voting• Discussion groups
– For example, the French word for “followers”:• Suiveur – “stalkers”• Mouton – “sheep”• Adepte – “followers”
Just How Well?Translators:
Strings:
Translations:
Average/Translator:
2,600
4,200
520,000
200
What Works Less Well?
• Turn around time (democracy isn’t fast)• Long, difficult strings are often skipped• Inconsistent wording• Sensitive content• Community management
– They are not self-managing
The Compromise
• Like most things, there was a compromise– We have in-house translators to moderate
content, manage the community, and act as user support in each language
– This gives us someone to oversee consistency and handle any sensitive content we might have
• For our core languages we will always employ translators but they can do more with less.
Coming Soon
• Opening up communities in more languages• Opening up more projects to community input
– Twitter for iPhone, Mobile Web, etc.
• Streamline our translation UI and adding more context
• Launching Twitter in more languages– The obvious outward sign of success
• Localizing with more locale-specific features
Before the Q&A…I need to ask a favor.
@ruthHappy 10th Anniversary
Questions?I’m here to help.