Moderator Spotlight: Amir

As a member of the Twitter Moderator program, I am responsible for ensuring that the right Hebrew translation goes through to the site -- after all, Twitter is one of the most important websites out there. By volunteering my time to make Twitter available in Hebrew, I get to help people become a part of the global online community, as most people don’t speak English. It may sound like a slogan, but it’s really important for me.

I work full-time in the Wikimedia Foundation, making the software of Wikipedia and the projects related to it, such as Wikisource, work as well as possible in all languages. My personal focus is on languages written right-to-left, but I also work to help the people who speak languages from India, Ethiopia, Burma, Russia and other lands.

Working on a right-to-left language is a really fascinating challenge. I encourage other multi-lingual Hebrew speakers to help us. Come on in, join the fun, and influence millions of people! Not just the millions of people who speak Hebrew, but also the many more millions of people with whom they will connect in various ways. Besides, since all right-to-left languages have similar technical problems, it’s a way to meet excellent people from Qatar, Iran and Pakistan and other countries, with whom you don’t always have the chance to communicate elsewhere.

Just like the way your Twitter timeline connects you to new people and new perspectives, so does the Twitter translator program. I think the best way to interact with new people and hear interesting ideas is to click on hashtags. I find people all over the world who are interested in the same things that I am, and all share their unique perspectives.

It’s great that Twitter allows volunteers to translate! I wish more software projects did it. All software and websites should be translated to all languages, but many software companies don’t invest in translators, because they think that the investment is not worth it. I appreciate Twitter’s approach, providing volunteer translators with infrastructure and just letting them do their thing.