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Mastodon supports 96 different languages and dialects.

You can choose your interface language, filter your timelines by language, and say which languages you post in. There's also a built-in automatic translation system on some servers (depending on whether your admin has switched it on).

It's important to set your posting language as this is what allows the language filters and automatic translation systems to work.

You can find out how to do all these things at:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/setting-your-language-preferences-on-mastodon-and-filtering-out-posts-in-other-languages

Setting your language preferences on Mastodon, filtering out posts in other languages, filtering search results by language | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse

An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse

Feb 25, 2023 at 6:31pmWeb
Show threadStephen GreenhamFeb 25, 2023
@feditips I wish as a mod on a server where I have translation turned on I could manually change some people's post language... It's infuriating when someone has their post that is in another language, marked as English, and then I can't translate it :(
Show threadMike (no not that one)Feb 25, 2023
@solarisfire @feditips I was just thinking this. I follow a lot of Ukrainian news to keep up on the war. And some jump back and forth from English to Ukrainian between posts, but their language is still say to English, so the translator doesn't know any different...
Show threadStephen GreenhamFeb 25, 2023
@mikey @feditips It should be doable as the statuses are saved with their language per instance... So just changing it on the local instance shouldn't change it for the whole fediverse...
Show threadMrClonFeb 25, 2023

@solarisfire i wish post language selector was more convenient (and may be had some auto-detection). I post in two languages and sometime (most of the time) forget to set correct post language

@feditips

Show threadStephen GreenhamFeb 25, 2023
@MrClon @feditips I don't think it could be placed any more conveniently on the web client, but in some other third-party clients, it's pretty much non-existent. Auto-detection would be perfect. I wonder if it would be possible to run something periodically server side that looks through the statuses table, guesses the language of the status, and then updates the language column :/
Show threadBraw ☕🏳️‍🌈Feb 25, 2023

@solarisfire mastodon used to have auto-detection, but it was pretty inaccurate, so it was removed in favour of manual language selection.

Personally I think a mix of both definitely would be good: language gets detected as you type and if it's not correct then you can override it. But I don't think there's a way to ship language detection to client easily.

Good thing you can change the language while editing the post.

@MrClon @feditips

Show threadStephen GreenhamFeb 25, 2023
@brawaru @MrClon @feditips Not really. Google's tools all seem to call home to do it... But doing it without relying on some big provider (which seems to be the whole point of federation) would be tricky.
Show threadMrClonFeb 25, 2023
@brawaru @solarisfire @feditips i suspect language detection can work good if algorithm know set of languages that user can use. e.g. user select japanese and english as his language, so autodetection will not assume that post written in chinese
Show threadChristianFeb 26, 2023
@MrClon @solarisfire @feditips I agree!
Show threadAnders EknertFeb 25, 2023
@feditips seems like very few of the mobile clients (that I’ve tried) support setting the language. I’d love for this to work.
Show threadDimaiFeb 25, 2023
@anderseknert @feditips looks like #tusky supports that fine ✌️
Show threadChristianFeb 26, 2023
@dee @anderseknert @feditips open source app #IceCubesApp does too!
Show threadMortenFeb 25, 2023
@anderseknert @feditips If you’re an iOS user then try @IceCubesApp . It does a really nice job translating and makes it easy to set post language.
It even warns you if you are about to answer a post in the wrong language 😅
Show threadChristianFeb 26, 2023
@bech @anderseknert @feditips @IceCubesApp yes! It’s the next best thing after actual automatic detection from Mastodon itself.
Show threadk8quinn 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 🇪🇺Feb 25, 2023
@feditips The language filter doesn't work for me. Even though I have my filter set for English only, I still see a lot of posts in Asian (CJK+) languages on both the local (Vivaldi.social) and federated timelines. 😞
Show threadJerry on MastodonFeb 25, 2023

@feditips Hi Fedi.Tips. Regarding, "There's also a built-in automatic translation system on some servers (depending on whether your admin has switched it on)."

Is this in the standard 4.1.0 Mastodon release? I cannot find this option?

Show threadgavinisdie Feb 25, 2023
@feditips but does it support Galactic basic? (I hate writing its cursive form)
Show threadTormod HalvorsenFeb 26, 2023

@feditips @chris

Hey, thanks! I was wondering about this. Language filters enabled!

Show threadErik “Lacraia” MagnussonFeb 26, 2023
@feditips Has there emerged a standard for dealing with posting in multiple languages? If I want to write my message in multiple languages, do I put them in the same toot or do I respond to myself.