As an on-off Arabic linguist in a former life, and someone with rudimentary NLP and computational linguistics coursework, good luck with that. Jokes aside, as

As an on-off Arabic linguist in a former life, and someone with rudimentary NLP and computational linguistics coursework, good luck with that. Jokes aside, as people commended the Arab Spring for the Twitter/FB revolution, I often feel this type of interface presumes people want to communicate across language boundaries. If anything, and as a computer geek a quite depressing observation, it has largely allowed Balkanization to improve. You wanna mobilize x number of activists in your region, specifically, with your dialect? Copy and paste text into FB. Twitter, or whatever least resistance platform. You can even ask them to translate the interface surrounding said text for you, as they did in the Arab world with some tech savvy people, they called themselves Al-Mugharridoon (Tweeters, like literally the sound the bird makes), but no one cares. FB and Twitter and amplification systems now for local media and communication, facing inward not outward. Translation or localized UI has made little difference, beyond allowing islands of similar regional groups, even those peering at each other and hating each other (Egyptian Islamists and liberals) both operating on the same infrastructure! It's awesome in a truly scary way. I have made similar comments to experts on the media industry, specifically in the Arab world. We were all taught in college to speak proper Modern Standard Arabic as bridge language for Arabs to understand each other despite significant structural difference in dialect. Living in the region for half a decade, I see its importance going down. Where I live Arab kids use English for this function, even with limited education and broken English in most cases. With the increasingly cheap tech, just like FB, amplifying your local dialect and facing inward is now cost-effective. Al Jazeera, yes even those credited with Modern Standard Arabic on satellite and rejuvenating pan-Arabism, has Mubashir (Direct) channels with local content, for example Egypt, where you get Egyptian commentators speaking Egyptian slang directed at Egyptians. There is value in this, and regional channels do the same, with a far smaller budget? Why and how? It's cheaper, I do not need education to enage, and I honestly do not give a crap about those outside my community, unless it through my local lens looking out within a frame I appreciate. Of course I see the value for FB engineers and the general crowd here. But sadly living abroad has taught me the cheapening of communication tools is increasing insularity except for those who want do, as a joke BGP-style node work between cultures. Those people have a tough gig, and it blows up in their face a lot, just like BGP. (Pardon the networking joke, I am in a rare mood.)