Twitter has got some new tricks up its sleeves to make reading tweets easier and more convenient. The micro blogging site introduced a new feature that lets you view a recap of some of the top Tweets of the accounts you follow. Twitter also announced Tweet Translation, a special feature that offers translation of a Tweet written in a different language. With these two new important features, you won’t have to miss any action in Twitter whether you are away or use a different language.
An update for Twitter app for Android which has yet to be released will include a special summary of the most popular and important Tweets. In your home timeline, expect to see the best Tweets you may have missed from the accounts you follow. Twitter will show those messages on a separate “While you were away…” box. You can easily close this view to check your regular timeline.
Twitter has added Tweet translation so you can understand those messages written in other languages. It is disabled by default so you need to adjust the Tweet translation setting first by logging in to your account on a computer, go to Account settings, go to the Tweet translation section, then check the box next to Show Tweet translations. While on your timeline, you can view and translate a Tweet by clicking on the globe icon. The translated message will expand below the Tweet in the original language.
The Tweet translation reminds me of the ‘See translation’ feature in Facebook which can be really funny at times. I’m interested to follow new Twitter accounts and read Tweets in different languages and see how very well Bing Translator will do its job. The Twitter team partnered with Bing Translator to help translate more than 40 language pairs using machine translations. Don’t expect translations to be perfect because results will still vary. Bing Translator uses an advanced translation software but everything will depend on what the professional translators will provide in terms of fluency and accuracy.
