Google, Facebook move up launches in Persian to help Iranian reformists
Courtney C. Radsch (Dubai, UAE) - Google launched its Persian automatic translation service Friday just hours after Facebook announced a beta-version of the social networking site, because of the ongoing protests in Iran over election results that gave incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, a second term.

"We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran. Like YouTube and other services, Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa, increasing everyone's access to information," Franz Och, principal scientist, wrote on the company's blog.

The California-based company, which also owns the video sharing site YouTube, moved up the launch of its 42nd language in beta version as did Facebook. Och said Google was "launching this service quickly, so it may perform slowly at times," adding that it was optimized for English-Farsi translations.

Facebook, popular with reformists who used it to build support for their candidate and disseminate information after the results, announced late Thursday night that the site would be available in Farsi, allowing Iranian users to navigate in their native language.

"Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath," Eric Kwan, a Facebook engineer working to localize the site, wrote on Facebook's official blog.

Facebook Persian was "already in translation before worldwide attention turned to the Iranian elections, but because of the sudden increase in activity we decided to launch it sooner than planned. This means that the translation isn't perfect, but we felt it was important to help more people communicate rather than wait," said Facebook.

Google also relaxed restrictions on violent and graphic videos from the protests in Iran posted to YouTube in recognition of the critical roll user-generated content was playing in the country, where foreign media have been banned from covering the protests.

"In general, we do not allow graphic or gratuitous violence on YouTube," the company said in a statement. "However, we make exceptions for videos that have educational, documentary, or scientific value. The limitations being placed on mainstream media reporting from within Iran make it even more important that citizens in Iran be able to use YouTube to capture their experiences for the world to see."

The visas of most foreign journalists, typically granted for seven days, ran out earlier in the week and were not renewed in an attempt by the government to control coverage of the largest demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Despite media frenzy and the re-discovery of Twitter it's nothing terribly new, especially for tech savvy Iranian youth who have already created one of the most dynamic blogospheres in the world. Activists Moldova, China, Burma/Myanmar, Egypt to name but a few have all used citizen journalism tools and social media to further their cause and circumvent varying levels of government censorship and control.

But the story of anti-government protesters using new media tools - which just happen to have emerged from American companies -- fits into the framework of Iran created by the West, especially the United States, as an authoritarian religious state that needs to be reformed. So the mainstream media has amplified the voices and perspective of reformers, and largely focused on one side while offering very little examination of either pro-government rallies or pro-Ahmedinejad voters and where their voices fit in the turmoil. So actually Ahmedinejad's attempt to control coverage seems to hace backfired because I doubt that pro-government demonstrators are exerting the same amount of effort to get their perspective and images and videos out to the world public as the reformer foes.

Throughout the week, supporters of the protesters around the world had been making their own computers available as proxies to Iranians who wanted to evade government censors. These people have been publishing the IP addresses of their computers to public forums like Twitter, offering them as so-called proxy servers. continued Internet activity from Iran was a testament to the durability of the Internet and the commitment of Iranians to get their story out despite the government crackdown.

The vast majority of bloggers are young, and the youth were overwhelmingly in support of Mousavi, especially city-based affluent youth, who are also more likely to be technologically savvy with access to private Internet connections and the technical know-how to use proxy servers to get around state censorship. Thus the citizen journalism coming out of Iran is skewed by the population that is producing it, and thus an incomplete picture of sentiment in Iran. That said, youth make up some 60% of the Iranian population

The government is fighting back with the same methods. Ahmediniejad supporters have sought to infiltrate reformists online, passing themselves off as reformists while posting news and views sympathetic to the pro-government side. Users on Twitter sent out false tweets purporting to be from a Western journalist with a major network. But he told me his followers quickly surmised the tweet from persian_guy was a ploy and sent out warnings accordingly. Lists of impersonators are kept and updated for everyone to be aware of.