Facebook’s recent announcement that it is releasing a new translation tool free of charge to other websites has caught the attention of such media giants as the New York Times. Scooped by the Times once again!

The announcement of a free translation tool based on Facebook’s own methods comes as a bit of a surprise on the heels of the hubbub over Facebook’s patent application over its method of crowdsourced translation (which you can read a bit more about in the upcoming issue of MultiLingual magazine… too bad this latest notice arrived just prior to going to print). To top it all off, Google announced it also is offering a free crowdsourcing method to translate websites. Quick thinking, Google.

What this means in the long run remains to be seen, of course.