Twitter adds Arabic and Urdu home pages

Twitter on Tuesday launched Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi and Urdu versions of its website, further localizing of the popular one-to-many text messaging service. Twitter users have long been able to fire off messages, referred to as “tweets,” in those languages but will now be able to visit Twitter.com home pages with local-language notices and instructions, a spokeswoman told AFP. “Twitter is now available in right-to-left languages,” Twitter said in a blog post, crediting the accomplishment to the work of thousands of volunteer translators who began working on the project in January. “Some of these volunteers live in regions where Twitter is officially blocked,” the San Francisco-based firm said. “Their efforts speak volumes about the lengths people will go to make Twitter accessible and understandable for their communities.” The roster of those who donated time to localize Twitter.com included a Saudi blogger, Egyptian college students, technology professionals in Iran and Pakistan, and co-founders of a grassroots #LetsTweetArabic campaign. With the additions, Twitter.com has user home pages available in 28 languages. Twitter has enjoyed explosive growth since it was founded in 2006. Twitter last month finished rolling out overhauled pages crafted to boost the appeal of the message-sharing service to users around the world.