Many Facebook users have friends from all over the world who speak a wide variety of languages. The resulting language barrier often prevents Facebook users from being able to interact with each other. In an effort to provide worldwide connection, the company is trying to remove this obstacle.

The Multilingual Composer

In a recent article, Facebook announced the most recent update to the social network: the multilingual composer. This new feature responds to needs raised by the fact that “people use Facebook to communicate and share in different languages and that 50 percent of Facebook’s community speaks a language other than English”.

Earlier this year, the multilingual composer was available only to Facebook Pages, but now it is available for individual accounts. The multilingual composer allows users to “compose a single post in multiple languages, and viewers who speak one of those language will see the post only in their preferred language”.  No longer will authors have to reach their audiences either by writing multiple posts and targeting specific audiences with specific languages or by writing an individual long post with different languages contained within.

How does it work?

Authors can compose messages in multiple languages. Then, Facebook’s logarithm will choose which message to display according to the reader’s preference. If the preferred user’s language is not available, other criteria like location, user’s habits, etc. will determine the most relevant version of the post to show.

To use this feature go to your language settings, click on “Post in multiple languages”, enable the option “create a single post in multiple languages,” input the changes, and then your post.

By developing this feature, Facebook empowers users with a new tool that will facilitate their work, save their time, and make the site more reader friendly.