Facebook Add Hausa, Fulani Language To Its Platform

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Social media platform, Facebook has added two Nigerian languages, Hausa and Fulani to its language features. Also, Maltese and Corsican were also added bringing the total languages available on the platform to 100.

Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, made this announcement yesterday while expressing optimism that the addition will halt the disappearance of certain languages.

“Facebook is now available in more than 100 languages — with more than one billion people using a language other than English!

“Today we added Fula, Maltese and Corsican. Our community makes this possible.

“Over the last decade, hundreds of thousands of people around the world have worked together to find the right translations for words and phrases in the Facebook interface.

“Because the idea of a “Like” in English may mean something different in Arabic or Japanese,” he said.

 

It will be recalled that, Mark Zuckerberg, who was in Nigeria some few weeks back to meet with ICT entrepreneurs and software developers in Lagos had promised to add Nigerian languages as offering services on Facebook.

However, on the reasons for the added languages, he said, “For people to share what matters to them and see what matters to the people they care about, they need services available in a language they know.

Some of the languages we’ve added don’t have meaningful presence on the internet.”

“Others, like Corsican, are in danger of disappearing altogether, according to UNESCO.”

Zuckerberg also reiterated this resolve to make the platform available to people no matter where they are on the globe.

“So thanks to everyone in our community for helping us hit this milestone of 100 languages! We’ll keep working to open up our community to everyone – no matter where they live or what language they speak.”

 

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