Up until now, Twitter's website has been available to users only in two languages: English and Japanese. That makes since, since in the beginning, that was where the majority of Twitter's user base was located - English-speaking countries and Japan. Since many Europeans are English-speakers, the language barrier hasn't been that epic, but it's a barrier nonetheless.

Twitter announced today that they're going to start localizing Twitter into four more languages - the "FIGS" languages. Before you ask, no, that's not the language spoken by tasty, juicy fruits high in fiber. That's French, Italian, German, and Spanish. Why those four languages? 'Cause that's where websites like Twitter who want to localize their content start - with those four languages.

Before you start to worry that Twitter is going to get bogged down in a lengthy internationalization project, you should know that Twitter's not going it alone - in fact, they're going to need your help. Their plan is to enable a feature that would allow users to suggest a translation for different elements of the website. Essentially, they're going to crowd-source translation. This is a strategy which has worked out brilliantly for Facebook, which allows any user to participate in translation and localization of its interface (Facebook can even be translated into pirate English. A mobile phone is called a "pocket parrot, which to this day I insist on calling my phone).

It's an excellent move for Twitter, and one that should serve to push Twitter out into the rest of the world with an even greater speed than it's spread so far. Although much of the world speaks English, much of the world would also probably rather interact with the website in their preferred mother tongue. This should give Twitter a leg up in areas like India in which other localized microblogging platforms have sprang up to fill the language void.

In the beginning, at least, Twitter isn't going to open up the localization interface to everyone - according to their blog, they're starting out with a small team of "volunteer translators," but they also said that they expect that number to grow. In addition, they've asked speakers of other languages to bear with them - once they get their core six languages out of the way, it's fairly certain that they'll expand the localization project to include...well, probably just about any language that Facebook uses, to hazard a guess.

Now if there was just some way to filter Tweets by language - I've got some Norwegian guy on my follow list who Tweets in Norwegian half of the time!