In this talk, Nico Sallembien of Twitter will present the tools his team built to enable a community of 500,000 translators to translate Twitter, and how they used them in the recent launch of four bidirectional languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi and Urdu.

Nico is an experienced software engineer with in-depth experience of the localization and internationalization process. At Twitter, he built the community translation platform at http://translate.twttr.com and localized all of Twitter’s products using this new translation infrastructure. This helped launch Twitter in an additional 16 languages, while maintaining the existing languages quality through major redesigns of the site. He previously worked in similar roles for Google, Ariba, and Borland.

Twitter will host this event in San Francisco. Parking is available in a garage underneath Twitter's offices and in nearby lots. Norbert Lindenberg, organizer of the SF Globalization Meetup, says the location is within easy walking distance from the Powell Street BART and Muni station, the San Francisco Caltrain station, and Muni bus lines 5, 6, 8X, 9, 10, 12, 14, 21, 27, 30, 31, 38, 45, 47, 49, and 71. Please see the address and map link above.

The hashtag for this event will be #IMUG415, using the 415 area code in honor of the first IMUG event in San Francisco since the group's founding in 1987. Follow @i18n_mug: http://twitter.com/i18n_mug

Admission is free for IMUG members and host staff, and $5 for non-members. IMUG membership is only $20 for the first year, $15 for annual renewal, or $100 for lifetime membership. (At this time we are not charging for remote webcast attendance, but please support IMUG if you find these events useful.) Click here to join, renew or pay a single non-member event fee via PayPal. Cash and checks also accepted at our events. http://www.imug.org/imug-membership-and-event-fees.htm

Please RSVP via Meetup to help IMUG and our hosts prepare for fast entrance, seating and other details. It's OK to RSVP right up to the last minute, as that will help us ensure enough space for everyone! http://events.imug.org/