On the 1st of March 2012, thousands of tweets in a language originating from the South West of Nigeria dominated Nigerian conversation on the social network. This was no spontaneous coincidence. The people behind the #TweetYoruba campaign, as it was dubbed at the time, had one clear goal in mind. To get Yoruba supported on Twitter.

Their efforts were not in vain. After a few hours of a sustained barrage, Twitter’s translation desk took notice and promised that support would come in a few months.


kola tunbosun

Of all the enthusiastic Yoruba afficionados in Nigeria and across the diaspora who were driving the campaign, Kola Tubosun (@baroka on Twitter), a linguist and Yoruba scholar stood out. Piqued by a series of tweets he wrote about Yoruba handles that were wasted on Twitter, I reached out to him about to ask if cultural legacies like Yoruba would survive the interaction with evolving mediums of expression and globalisation, or if perhaps like fossils, they would only survive in some digital thesaurus form. His thoughtful response was optimistic of Yoruba’s future prospects.

But this was already January 2013, almost a year after the first Tweet Yoruba day, and Twitter was yet to make good on its promise.

It would eventually take two years, two tweet yoruba days (one more in 2013), and a dedicated core of Yoruba power translators. But the final outcome is its own reward. The localisation staffer they had corresponded with during the campaign notified Kola that Yoruba had been added to Twitter’s translation centre.


Twitter Translation Center - Yoruba

As we speak, Kola and others are working to translate the Twitter’s standard glossary of terms. They are understandably excited. Yoruba will be the only other African language asides Afrikaans (currently in beta) to be supported by the network. It probably helps that Yoruba seems to be relatively popular. It is spoken not just in Nigeria, but across the world by more than 30 million people, and was one of the first African languages to be added to the Google Translate engine. There is even a Yoruba section of Wikipedia, which Jimmy Wales acknowledged to be the fastest growing African language on the website, even if most of the 30,000 pages are authored by bots.

source: http://techcabal.com/2014/11/14/twitter-yoruba/

Good move make I just dey tweet my mama language dey go... What of una?

Oya twitter oma riran wo...

*modified*
1st to comment
Way the guy way dey untop me b4
Ehehehe mods don remove am

As d mod remove dis guy,all of una way dey read dis post,any form of hindrance on ur way shall be casted away. Amen

Nice

Why yoruba ?

Nice one

datguru:
Why yoruba ?

Because they worked for it.........are you disappointed.

YORUBA LEADS WHILE OTHERS FOLLOW
(AWA OMO ODUDUWA)

Who is that yoruba I'm always hearing about in ♍γ̲̣̣ kg3?

Awa omo oduduwa alenu be pon pon pon.
Won ma gbayi.

okay

What about Hausa; Igbo and Pigin english??

datguru:
Why yoruba ?

One at a time, why not Yoruba?

Acknowledge the new development first.

Omo Yoruba ni mi oooo...

Swagger!

Sope olorun. Swear to GOD

datguru:
Why yoruba ?

Because it is Yoruba.

Coz Yoruba are the most educated ppl in Nigeria

Omo, yabs go too much niyen oo

Good development, very soon ASA anti Orisa scriptures will be made available on Google store,ESE IFA anti bebe lo!

Additional wahala on Twitter.

Even twitter reckon with yoruba language. Yet some people will still be forming with fake irritative American accent.


Btw....
God bless me...
God bless the yoruba race...
God bless the federal republic of Nigeria

that's a good development..........Check out the latest fascinating news and entertainment gists from around the world >>>www.nationalhelm.com

[size=18pt]REALLY??

HAUSA & IGBO NKOR?[/size]

Omo Yoruba to d soul!!! So proud of my heritage

datguru:
Why yoruba ?

y not Yoruba ? don't begin those tribalism stunt here. OK ?

Eyin n dunu nitori wipe twitter pon yinle. Oun ti o ja ju ni wipe eyin lo ipinle(platform) naa daradara.
Ugbua, anyi bu ndi igbo ga gbambo hu na twitter tinyere igbo na asusu ha #tweetigbo obido go ozugbo ozugbo

Good development.

So?

Well,nice development.
When will it come out in hausa?

like seriously?