Twitter’s on-again-off-again relationship with Bing Translator is on again.
The company recently returned the feature to TweetDeck, giving users the ability to read quick (albeit inexact) translations of tweets in foreign languages. That’s especially useful during international news events such as today’s terrorist attack in Paris and plays into Twitter’s ambitions to be a global public square.
Translations are accessed a “Translate Tweet” link that appears on tweets that Twitter identifies as not in the users’ native language. Users who click on the link get an instant translation.
Judging from stray comments on Twitter — “oh hey tweet translator by bing is back” — the feature returned sometime around the first of the year. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the relaunch for all TweetDeck users, but declined to comment further.
Twitter has been experimenting with Bing translations since July 2013 and briefly rolled it out to its iOS and Android apps in advance of the 2014 FIFA World Cup (an obviously prime target for multi-language discourse). But in August it pulled back, removing translations from all its platforms.
The return of translation to TweetDeck, long a favorite tool for Twitter power users and journalists, could be a signal that Twitter is testing the waters again before rolling it out on other platforms.
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