Just as we posted the other day, the latest updates to Foursquare’s mobile apps carry with it support for Indonesian, Russian, Thai, Portuguese, and Korean. These five new languages join French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and of course, English. The breadth of support gives Foursquare native language for more than 1.5 billion people, though the majority of which obviously don’t use the service, but at least it’s there for those who want it.
While we were only informed of the changes to the BlackBerry app, today’s update actually brings the additional language support to the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry apps. To switch languages you’ll need to set your device’s language to your own. Apps that have support for your choice of language will switch along, those who do not will remain with its default language, most of which would be English. If you’re not keen on using your local language on your device then there’s no need to bother.
Additionally, Foursquare’s website also gains this support. You can change the language on the site by scrolling to the bottom and clicking on the part where it says English. It will then give you a list of the eleven languages that Foursquare supports.
I’ve updated my iPhone app and at a glance, the localization seems very thorough. Most of the time when you come across the first iteration of Indonesian language support, you’ll come away giggling seeing the wrong words being used, but not Foursquare. Except for certain terms such as Mayor, Badge, and Check-in, the choice of words fit nicely within context. On the other hand perhaps because the translation requirement isn’t as extensive as some other apps, it may have not posed too much of a challenge. Regardless, the localization team deserves a round of applause.
The updates can be downloaded from the Apple App Store, Android Market and BlackBerry App World. If you’re not sure how to get there, you can visit the download page at Foursquare’s website.
