MANILA, Philippines – Facebook announced the availability of M Translations in the Philippines, adding the Filipino language in the five languages that can be translated on Messenger. Facebook’s AI assistant, M, now translates Messenger conversations from English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese to Filipino and vice versa.
M Translations currently supports five languages and is available to people using Messenger in 6 countries namely: US, Mexico, France, Spain, Brazil and today, the Philippines. Message translations are automated using Facebook’s own translation engine based on neural machine translation technology, the same technology that translates posts and comments on Facebook and Instagram.
Translations are a meaningful milestone for M Suggestions and will enable people to connect with people they would not be able to seamlessly communicate with otherwise.
How it works
When you receive a message in a language that is different from your default language in Messenger, Facebook’s AI Assistant M, will ask if you would like to translate the message in your preferred supported language. If you say yes, M will then offer to auto-translate all future foreign-language messages in that conversation. Auto-translations are enabled on a per-conversation basis and you can opt-out of auto-translation at any time.
Facebook launched M Translations for Marketplace conversations initially available only in the US and Mexico, at the F8 2018 Conference last May. One of the key differentiators for people and businesses using Messenger is the ability to connect and reach people around the world. Buyers and sellers in Marketplace can communicate across languages with M suggestions for translations, which helps drive commerce between buyers and sellers despite language barriers.
