And no, we do not want to have the Buzz interface localized in to our own language. We want to publish Buzz-posts in our native language, without having to use a dedicated account for it. Allow me to explain.

Surprisingly enough isn’t English the only language on this planet, and a lot of people is struggling with numerous twitter-accounts to accommodate the followers. It is a annoyance for my English followers when i Tweet in Swedish and is probably equally annoying for any non-English-speaking-follower when i post in English. So the simple solution here is to use two accounts, yes? No.

Since Buzz is in early development it is the perfect opportunity to introduce a meta-tag called “locale” or “localization” with each Buzz. If i post something in English on my tommiepodzemski-buzz account i simply tag it with the “en_US”-locale and if i’m posting something in Swedish i simply tag it with “se_SV” (and i’m sure you translation-wizards will figure out a way to auto-detect language to make this even more streamlined for the user).

With this meta-data it’s a matter of UI adjustments to have an option which allow any Buzz-user to select which language-filter to for your friends buzz-stream. In my context, i’ll simply allow English and Swedish buzzes only. Rejoice! My Finnish, danish, Russian, Belgian, Dutch (ok, you get the picture) friend can now keep on Buzzing in any language they prefer. But i will only see stuff that i can actually read, ergo English and Swedish.

This is something that Twitter is missing out on and i know this is something that a lot of users are missing out on – both on Buzz and on Twitter.

So that’s that, update the code, adjust the UI and commit the change. Sit back and just enjoy the profit.

6 Comments

  1. No need to explicitly select language, google already does it for you. I prefer translating buzzes to your language, like in reader.

    1. Hi pihentagy,

      Don’t quite follow the “No need to explicitly select language, google already does it for you”-comment, do you mean that Google automatically tags your Buzz-posts with a locate? And it’s just a matter of filtering on the client-side?

      Went through the docs and can’t see any reference to a locale-in the buzz feed format:
      http://code.google.com/apis/buzz/documentation/

      1. Yes, google can automagically figure out the language for you. You can search your mail for messages having a specific language, you can search the web for specific languages.

        See for eg. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=807

        Yep, buzz does not support language filtering and translation yet.

        That would be a better candide for a suggestion: Google, give us language filters and translation tools in buzz!

  2. No need to explicitly select language, google already does it for you. I prefer translating buzzes to your language, like in reader.

  3. Hi pihentagy,Don't quite follow the “No need to explicitly select language, google already does it for you”-comment, do you mean that Google automatically tags your Buzz-posts with a locate? And it's just a matter of filtering on the client-side?Went through the docs and can't see any reference to a locale-in the buzz feed format:http://code.google.com/apis/buzz/documentation/

  4. Yes, google can automagically figure out the language for you. You can search your mail for messages having a specific language, you can search the web for specific languages.See for eg. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=807Yep, buzz does not support language filtering and translation yet.That would be a better candide for a suggestion: Google, give us language filters and translation tools in buzz!

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