A Transformational Journey to Launching Facebook into Long-tail Languages

Track: Advanced Localization Management | AL8 |   Everyone |
Thursday, October 12, 2023, 2:30pm – 3:15pm
Held in: Cedar/Pine, 2nd Floor
Presenters:
Marleen Julien - Creole Solutions 
Cecilia Piaggio - Meta
Host: Donna Parrish

Over the past two years, Meta translated Facebook into 35 languages while largely engaging directly with regional suppliers as part of our sourcing strategy. Sourcing for and working with providers of underrepresented languages on the internet presented unique challenges and we learned some important lessons along the way, which we’d like to share with our audience. For one of the languages, Haitian Creole, we worked with Creole Solutions, and we would like to dive deeper into this partnership. We will share the insights, learnings, and experiences of the collaboration from both perspectives: a small single-language vendor and a large global company. We will also show the human dimension of the collaboration and the impact it had on everyone involved in the project, as well as in the Haitian Creole community.

Takeaways: Participants will learn about supply chain disintermediation as an opportunity for regional suppliers; how to build resilience when engaging with emerging countries; the impactful role of localization for underrepresented languages.