The three-year-old social networking Web site Facebook is now getting users to work for it -- for free! Facebook users from across the globe are translating the Web site's visible framework into some two dozen languages -- helping the site better serve 60 percent of its 69 million users who live outside of the US, as it claims. In other words, Facebook is "crowdsourcing" translation for free but its rival social networks aren't. Why? "We thought it'd be cool," said Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook, adding, "Our goal would be to hopefully have one day everybody on the planet on Facebook."

While Facebook may think it cool to embark on such an initiative, there's mounting criticism online with several users questioning the authenticity of such translation by amateurs as against professionals. In particular, the Spanish language version seems to have taken a beating with one Ana B Tores (25), a professional translator calling the translation 'extremely poor'. Another raging debate seems to be over the word 'poke', Facebook's term for giving someone a playful nudge. In Spanish, it has become "dar un toque", in French "faire un signe", and in German, "anstupsen". Translators in Japan couldn't find an equivalent so they decided to go with the English word. Think about it, if there ever was a Hindi version, what would we call 'poke'; would the Hindi equivalent be sparsh or chhoo or chimti... Would that do justice to the translation?

How does the translation apparatus work? Apparently Facebook has developed a translation application whereby users can install the application and translate commonly-used words and phrases occurring on Facebook into their own language equivalents. Users can also see top contributions to the translation process via a leaderboard system.

Now, reliability of translation apart, several users feel it's just a way for Facebook to get labor for free. One Valentin Macias (29), a Californian who teaches English in Seoul, South Korea, has in the past volunteered to translate for Wikipedia but said he won't do it for Facebook. "Wikipedia is a charitable, information-sharing, donation-supported cause. Facebook is not. Therefore, people should not be tricked into donating their time and energy to a multimillion-dollar company so that the company can make some more millions -- at least not without some kind of compensation," Macias said.