Facebook will automatically translate posts into different languages

[SAN FRANCISCO] Facebook on Friday began testing a translation tool that will automatically let posts be displayed in languages users prefer.

The leading social network first made the "multilingual composer" tool available earlier this year for use on pages representing companies, brands, groups and celebrities through its Pages service.

Now it will be available to general users.

"Page authors and other people on Facebook can compose a single post in multiple languages, and the viewers who speak one of those languages will see the post in their preferred language only - allowing people to more easily interact with their diverse audiences," the company said.

Half of Facebook's more than 1.5 billion users worldwide speaks a language other than English, the California-based social network says.

Among factors Facebook will use to determine which language to use for posts include locales designated in account settings and which languages users routinely use for their posts.

The social network plans to use multilingual posts to improve machine translation capabilities with the aim of one day removing language barriers across the social network.

AFP