The networking site Facebook has launched a crowdsourced application, Facebook Translations, that “allows people to suggest translations and vote alternatives up and down,” says Doug Caverly at WebProNews. Caverly commented that the site was not working as of December 28, but that more than 800 people were reportedly involved in translating the site into Spanish, a no-cost project that might bring in additional users. Caverly questions, however, how well Facebook will handle privacy issues in languages other than English.

And in case Facebook or any other company is not 100% confident about the quality of the volunteer translation it’s receiving via the web, a company called LingoHub now offers social translation proofreading and linquistic quality assurance (QA) services. The company will also help build and maintain the system, including wikis and language files, and resolve internationalization issues.

So, social translation creates a new business niche—“just in case” proofreading and localization.