As if Filipinos need any more reason to be addicted to Facebook, the social media platform announced yesterday that its Messenger app can now translate conversations to Filipino.
Multiple reports state the Filipino is one of five languages Messenger can translate messages to.
Others include English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. However, right now, the feature is only available to users in the United States, Mexico, France, Spain, Brazil, and the Philippines, The Philippine Star reported.
The translations are done by a Facebook system called M Translations, which was unveiled in May during F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference.
At first, the technology was only available for translations from English to Spanish and vice versa on Facebook’s Marketplace but was eventually extended to Messenger and other languages, Venture Beat reported.
So how does it work?
Users who receive messages in a language other than the one their phone is set to will be asked if he or she wants it translated, GMA News wrote.
According to the report, auto-translations are enabled for each conversation and users can undo the command at any time.
This launch comes just days after it was reported that Facebook gave companies like Netflix and Spotify access to users’ private messages.
Despite the controversy, the translation feature will probably still prove to be handy for Filipinos, many of whom are very active on Facebook.
A study by London-based consultancy firm We Are Social reported in February that there are 67 million Facebook accounts from the Philippines, the same number of internet users, The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported.
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