News

Twitter Now Supports Correct Arabic Feminine Form

Twitter has announced that it will allow Arabic-speaking women to be addressed in the feminine form instead of the default masculine form.

Published

4 months ago

June 22, 2021

Joanna

Twitter

Professional translators don’t have it easy because various languages don’t just use different words to express the same notions — they also sometimes work completely differently. In Arabic (as well as several other languages), grammatical structures change depending on the gender of the subject.

Now imagine you’re a translator, and your job is to translate the word “Tweet” into Arabic. Do you choose the masculine form or the feminine form? When Twitter first added support for the language, it went with the former option. Now, the social network has also added support for the latter.

“We’re adding this language support to Twitter.com and working to bring it to Twitter for iOS and Android as well. We’re committed to using inclusive language at Twitter, regardless if it’s written down, shown on our site and apps, or embedded in our code,” write Carla El Maalouli, Head of Business Marketing at Twitter MENA, and Fabien Ho Ching Ma, Twitter Software Engineer.

رحبوا بالعربية (مؤنث)، لغة العرض الجديدة على نسخة الويب من تويتر. #أتحدث_بالمؤنث pic.twitter.com/MQL7qkou2K

— Twitter MENA (@TwitterMENA) June 15, 2021

The steps to switch from the default masculine form to the feminine form are very simple:

How To Switch To Twitter’s Arabic Feminine Form

Log in to Twitter.com.
Go to Settings and privacy.
Navigate to Accessibility, display, and languages.
Select Languages and Display language.
Pick the Arabic (feminine) option from the Display language menu.

Twitter will then address you using the feminine form. If you still see the masculine form, log out and log in again.

Also Read: Twitter Verification Badge Is Now Available To The Public

Alongside the support for the feminine form, Twitter is also launching a campaign titled #FeminineArabic أتحدث_بالمؤنث# to encourage other tech companies to follow suit.

“We know there’s more work to be done for our service to reflect the variety of voices around the world, and we’ll continue to share what we learn and how we update Twitter based on your feedback,” states the official press release.

News

Facebook Will Create 10,000 Jobs In The EU To Build Its Metaverse

Facebook decided to invest in the EU because the company believes that European talent is world-leading, supported by first-class universities.

Published

14 hours ago

October 21, 2021

David

facebook will create 10,000 jobs in the eu to build its metaverse

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Facebook has announced that it wants to create 10,000 jobs in the European Union (EU) to build its metaverse, a virtual reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.

The concept of the metaverse can be traced to Neal Stephenson’s 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. In the novel, the metaverse is a virtual shared space that appears to its users as an urban environment. This space is accessed through personal terminals connected to virtual reality goggles.

Sound familiar? That’s because the metaverse is quickly becoming a reality thanks to companies like Oculus, a subsidiary of Facebook, and the combined effort of developers and content creators from around the world.

By creating thousands of new high-skilled jobs within the EU over the next five years, Facebook wants to accelerate the development of the metaverse to usher in a new phase of interconnected virtual experiences, enabled by technologies like virtual and augmented reality.

“At its heart is the idea that by creating a greater sense of ‘virtual presence,’ interacting online can become much closer to the experience of interacting in person,” said Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs. “The metaverse has the potential to help unlock access to new creative, social and economic opportunities”.

According to the official announcement, Facebook decided to invest in the EU because the company believes that European talent is world-leading, supported by first-class universities. Facebook also mentioned the role European policymakers are playing in shaping the internet, so it’s likely that the investment has a political dimension to it.

Also Read: How To Lock Your Facebook Profile (From Mobile & Desktop)

Aware of its tarnished reputation, the social media giant stressed that no single company would own and operate the metaverse — just like no single company owns the internet today. Of course, that doesn’t change anything about the fact that Facebook wants to play a huge role in it.

Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg told his employees that Facebook is becoming a metaverse company with the goal of building a set of connected social apps and supporting hardware. The recently released Horizon Workrooms remote collaboration app for the Oculus Quest 2 headset can be seen as an early piece of the much larger puzzle the metaverse will become in the future.