Reddit announced on Wednesday that it is leveraging the power of AI and machine translation to make its website readable in dozens of countries throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
This feature works acrossthe Reddit ecosystem(mobile, apps, and desktop) and will enable users to auto-translate both posts and their replies into their language of choice, like aBabelfishfromThe Hitchhiker’s Guide. You’ll be able to post in your preferred language and, assuming it’s supported by the system, will automatically belocalized for whoever is reading it. That is, if you’re living in Brazil and reading a post with replies in both English and Spanish, you won’t have to translate each individual response, the entire thread (and all of Reddit for that matter) will appear in Portuguese.
“Redditors in Brazil and Spain can now click the translate icon in the overflow menu in the top right corner of our apps to translate their entire Reddit feed—including posts and comments—into new language options,” the company said in an announcement. Translated posts will be marked as such to avoid confusion and will offer you the option to read them in their original language as well.
The companydebuted this capability in Maywith auto-translate for French speakers.Reddithadpreviously introduced a similar translation feature, though that only worked on individual posts rather than throughout the site.
The announcement comes seven months after the company went public. As a primarily English-language platform,Redditseeks to grow its user base by making its existing content available to potential new posters around the world and the company has determined that the most effective way to do that is through machine translation. As of the announcement, Reddit now supports both Spanish and Portuguese. In the coming weeks, the feature will roll out to Germany, Italy, the Philippines, and countries throughout Latin America.
