MONTREAL - Facebook is now offering users a distinctly French-Canadian version of the popular social networking website thanks to the efforts of hundreds of largely Quebecois users who helped with translation.
While a French-language setting has been available on Facebook since last year, many Canadian francophones wanted a version that was more in line with Quebec French, said company spokesman Elmer Sotto.
"Our goal essentially is to let people who use Facebook be able to openly share and connect with people around the world, especially their friends," he said.
"As we start seeing people use the site, we also start getting a lot of requests from various users asking for a version of Facebook in their native languages."
This prompted Facebook to come up with an application that allows users to submit suggestions for translating the website. Participants can then vote for the various headings and phrases they prefer, Sotto said.
Unlike the European version launched last year which refers to "college" and "lycee," the French-Canadian platform, for example, uses "cegep" and "ecole secondaire" in place of the English words for post-secondary and high school.
"If not for the users translating it into Canadian French, those kind of subtleties and nuances would likely not have ended up being reflected in the final version of Canadian French Facebook," he said.
Sotto said the French-Canadian language preference was quietly added to the site last week, although the official launch was Monday.
With more than 175 million users worldwide, the website began translating the site last year. The English site was first translated into Spanish and then into French and German.
So far about 215,000 Facebook users around the world have helped translate the site into more than 40 different languages including Mandarin, Hebrew and Arabic.
Sotto said more than 1,200 users contributed to the French-Canadian version.
Among the most prolific participants was 17-year-old Jimmy Lavoie.
According to the company's corporate blog, the Quebec teenager contributed more than 56,000 words and 8,000 phrases to the translation effort.
"As I worked on the translation, my goal was to help create a site that feels natural and comfortable to French-Canadians," he said in the blog posting.
"I like the French language and I try to protect it, on the Internet and in real life."
