Twitter testing automatic translation for tweets

Twitter is currently testing a new optional feature that translates individual tweets in the feed automatically as long as they are written in a language that the account holder doesn’t speak.

Twitter noted that this experimental feature that’s currently being tested is limited to select customers in Brazil who can now read Brazilian Portuguese machine translations of English-language tweets without having to do anything on their part.

According to Twitter’s announcement this morning, the company knows that “sometimes it can take a long time to translate tweet by tweet and stay on top of what is relevant to you.” The automatic translation feature is enabled by default for Brazilian users.

This has frustrated some users, 9to5Mac notes:

Translators like Google Translate and even the recently announced Apple Translate sometimes fail to provide accurate translations, which can cause misinterpretation of the content. While this might be useful for someone who can’t understand other languages, enabling automatic translations by default is a quite aggressive strategy.

People who are not part of the test can still translate tweets written in a different language, but they need to manually hit the translate button in a tweet, like before.

As mentioned, this feature is currently being tested with a small subset of Twitter’s user base. Twitter may ultimately kill it or roll it out more widely if the initial test proves successful.

Are you looking forward to Twitter’s automatic translation feature?

Let use know what you think by leaving a comment down below.