Google added a Farsi translation tool to the search engines Web site, the company said on its Official Google Blog. The free service enables speakers of the language, also known as Persian, “to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa — increasing everyones access to information,” said the company, based in Mountain View, California.
Facebook will make the entire social-networking site available to users in Farsi today in a so-called beta, or test, version, Eric Kwan, a Facebook engineer working on the project, said on the site of the Palo Alto, California-based company. The move is a response to the use of Facebook by people sharing news about the election, he said. Some 400 Farsi speakers on Facebook had already submitted their own translations of the site.
The announcement that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the winner prompted Irans largest demonstrations since the Islamic Revolution that ousted the monarchy in 1979. Many Iranian activists who dispute the outcome of the election have circumvented the governments Internet-blocking to access social-networking and other Web sites to publicize the rallies.
The opposition ignored a ban on their gatherings to demonstrate for the results of the vote to be scrapped, alleging the election was rigged to ensure Ahmadinejad would beat the main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi.
Mousavi Fans
Mousavis Facebook page has more than 65,000 fans. San Francisco-based Twitter Inc., which lets users post 140- character messages, said this week that it was delaying a network update because of demand for its services in Iran.
The Google tool for the translating Farsi to English has been “optimized” and the company is “working hard to improve” the translation of Farsi into 40 additional languages, Franz Och, a principal Google scientist, said on the site.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned today in a sermon that continued protests challenging the election result wont be tolerated. He said the Western media were among the forces at work against the country.
“The enemy and its media want to portray this as a fight between those who are for and those who are against the establishment, but this is wrong,” he said in a sermon televised from Tehran University.