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Facebook’s ability to automatically translate posts is a great feature, especially if you have friends and family scattered around the world, who like to post in more than one language. As great as Facebook's auto translate is, it can be annoying, especially if you are bilingual and understand multiple languages. If this is the case you’ll be glad to know that Facebook's auto translation feature can be turned off or tweaked to better suit your linguistic needs. We’ve listed all the available options for Facebook’s language settings below as well as comprehensive instructions on how to make optimal changes.
How to Make Yourself Hard to Find on Facebook (less searchable)
Being an International company, Facebook is flooded with countless different languages each day, all of which find their way to the far corners of the world. Even if you reside in the far reaches of outback Australia, you’ve probably seen another language grace your Facebook Feed at some stage, so long as you’ve got mobile coverage!
The only thing Facebook can't’ translate at this stage, are images that contain text. Memes are a perfect example of untranslatable content, which is super frustrating especially when you can read the comments but not the actual meme…. It’s a curiosity overload.
How to Turn Off Automatic Translation on Facebook.
Turning off and Customising Facebook Automatic translation features is quite easy, however, the settings that allow you to make the changes are often overlooked. Probably because Facebook have placed them in plain sight for a change, not buried in endless submenus. Next time you are scrolling through your news feed and you pass a post that has been automatically translated from one language into another, you will see three options below the translated text.
- A Cog Settings symbol.
- See Original Post.
- Rate this translation.
For whatever reason, Facebook has decided that as well as the Settings Cog, the Rate this Translation option will also open the settings menu, so you can click on either to open the Settings window. Inside this little window, you have several options, all of which are self-explanatory. If you would like to completely disable auto translations select the option Disable Automatic Translation for “specific language”
If you are feeling charitable and want to help Facebook with their translations, you can offer your own translation of the text, as well as rate the current Facebook translation. Some languages, like Polish, for example, are translated horribly by Facebook. My favorite example is a suggested post from a computer parts retailer that should have said “Users love using this Mouse” Facebook translated this into “He loves using the rodent” If you have any funny translation errors I'd love to read some of them in the comment section below.
How to Customise Automatic Translation and Language Settings on Facebook.
If you would like to tailor your Facebook Language settings to better suit your Linguist needs, you can click the bottom option on the settings list Language Settings This will direct you to the language settings menu for your account. On this page you have plenty of very specific Language options available that will allow you to change:
- The default language Facebook is displayed in
- Newsfeed Translation languages
- Multi-Lingual Posts.
Using the Edit option next to each subheading, you can make any required changes. Setting which languages you understand, then disabling those same languages in which languages do you not want automatically translated, is the best way to make sure they aren’t automatically translated anymore. Doing this will also make sure that any other languages you come across remain auto translated by default.
Once you have made changes remember to Save them before moving onto the next. If you forget to save any of the individual changes Facebook won’t remember your preferences. The best part about making these languages changes is that the options are exactly the same on any version of Facebook, Android, iOS and the Web.
