Reddit is rolling out machine learning-based translation services to more than 35 new regions across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, opening up its English-centric social network to more users.
The service comes nearly five months after Reddit first introduced site-wide translation for French users, but the company previously allowed users to translate individual posts into multiple languages. It also comes seven months after Reddit went public, and while the company says its user base and advertising revenue are growing, the most obvious way to attract a wider base is to make its content available in more languages.
The biggest selling point of Reddit’s new translation feature is that users can configure it to automatically translate posts and their comments from the community’s original language to their own language, based on Reddit’s settings. This means that a given subreddit can have a conversation between two different languages, and users don’t have to manually translate every response. They can post in any language they want, and it will automatically be translated into the community’s preset language, as long as Reddit supports it.
To this end, users in supported regions will see a new translation icon in the menu, allowing them to view content in their preferred language.
Translated posts on Reddit are labeled as translations, and users can view the post in its original language if they choose.
Reddit said earlier this year that content will be indexed in the languages the search engine supports, similar to how it translated French posts. That means when people Google answers to their questions in their own language, they’ll see results on Reddit too.
Reddit didn’t specify which new languages it would support, but as of today, translation services are available in Brazil and Spain, so it’s safe to assume that Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish will also be supported, though they’ll probably only be supported in those countries.
Reddit added that it plans to expand AI-based translation to markets across Germany, Italy, the Philippines, and Latin America “in the coming weeks.”
