Reddit is rolling out machine learning-powered translation to more than 35 new regions across Europe, Asia and Latin America as it aims to open up the primarily English-language social network to more users.
The service comes about five months after Reddit first introduced site-wide translation for French speakers, though the company had previously allowed users to translate individual posts into multiple languages. Reddit already allows users to specify a preferred content language for post recommendations, as well as set a display language that translates the Reddit interface itself.
Today’s announcement comes seven months after Reddit went public, and while the company says its user base and advertising revenue continue to grow, the most obvious way to attract more users is to make all of its content available in more languages.
The big selling point of Reddit’s new translation feature is that users can set both posts and corresponding comments to be automatically translated from the community’s original language to the user’s own language, according to Reddit’s settings. This means that a conversation may flow between two different languages in a given subreddit, and users no longer have to manually translate every response. They can post in any language they like, and it will be automatically translated into the community’s pre-set language, as long as Reddit supports it.
To do this, users in supported locales will see a new translation icon in their menu, allowing them to view content in their preferred language.
Posts that have been translated by Reddit are labeled as such, and users can choose to view the post in the original language if they prefer.
Reddit translation in action Image credit: Reddit
Reddit said that content will be indexed in languages supported by search engines, similar to how it translated French posts earlier this year, meaning users who search Google for answers to questions in their own language will also be able to see Reddit results.
Reddit didn’t reveal all of the new languages that will be supported, but since the translation service is already available in Brazil and Spain as of today, we can assume that Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish are now supported — though they’ll probably only be supported in those countries.
Reddit added that it plans to expand AI-powered translation to markets in Germany, Italy, the Philippines and across Latin America in the coming weeks.
