Reading the most popular posts of 2009 from the interesting blog Global by design, I´ve found one article about the need for a standard language change / choose icon. Many icons have become quite standard in the web world: rss icon, share icons, etc.. But when it comes to choose language every website create a new way of doing it. Sometimes is a flag, an world icon, a map or hundreds more.

There is now a new iniciative called Language Icon from OMC that proposes this icon to choose languages. What do you think about it? Does it make you to choose your language in a website?

The year is ending but we continue working hard and bringing new languages to Forvo. This time thanks to OziX for the Swedish translation, and Shady_arc and Eugeniavlasova for the Russian translation. We are working on more languages to be released soon: Dutch, German, Romanian and Chinese are on their way.

Do you think Forvo is useful? We hope so :) But here is a nice figure that confims that idea. Do you know how many time have been listened to the pronunciations on Forvo? Well, more than 25 million times. To be exact: 25.307.322.

Good news: We are very happy to announce the release of Forvo in Portuguese, Italian and French!

As promised by the end of the year we would have more languages available and here it is the first one. The delay until the very end of the year was not intentional anyway. ;)

We have to thank to the editors (Heracleum, spl0uf, emanuelJoab and Diônifer Alan) who have translated Forvo into these languages and also the rest of them who are making a great work in other languages too. Expect new languages in the next weeks, days, or even hours.

And remember, if you want to help to translate Forvo to more languages you just have to ask for it. We´ll set up a translator account for you in minutes.

Pleitecas, spanish editor.

Q: A little bit about you.

A: My name is Pedro. I´m an almost retired spaniard looking for developin my hobby, my comunication skills. I love nature and peace. I studied Geography. I´m sure we can be happy together if we are able to understand each other. We need a tool in order to traslate our feelings! I´m able to understand Spanish and written English, France and Italian, and a little bit of Romanian, Portuguese, Russian and Bulgarian.

Q: When did you know about Forvo?

A: I knew Forvo a year ago when a was looking for Bulgarian pronunciations.

Q: What did you like most?

A: What I like most is the possibility to record the MP3 pronunciations and listen to them wherever you are, until you are able to remember it. I like to put words together and build up phrases. That is the best!

I remember a book  I read when a was only a boy. The author is Ramon J. Sender and the title La tesis de Nancy (Nancy´s thesis). The story is about a study trip to Spain of a North American teenager trying to learn Spanish in Sevilla and a young gipsy with his own dialect-language different to regular Spanish as a teacher. Funny. I would like to recommend it all of you.

One of things we most like about Forvo is the oportunity to meet some incredible valuable people. That´s why we are starting a new section in this blog to introduce you to some of the editors that collaborate at Forvo. Snowcrocus, an english editor it´s the first one.

Q: A little bit about you.

A: I currently live in Florida, though hopefully I’ll be moving to Europe once I finish my doctorate. I grew up in Wisconsin, mostly in a tiny village with one business – a blacksmith. I’ve also briefly worked and/or gone to school in Germany, Peru, and France.

My background is anthropology/archaeology, and I currently do research in heritage conservation policy. Languages are kind of a hobby for me; I’ve studied Latin, German, French, Low German (Plattdeutsch), Russian, Swedish, and Spanish (in that order).

I even made up a language when I was 12 and taught it to a friend, so we could get in trouble with our teachers for speaking it in front of them. Unfortunately the only languages I can still speak are German and French, and I’m still working very hard to become fluent in French (which I find way more confusing than German!).

Q: When did you know about Forvo?

A: The French is what brought me to Forvo in the first place – looking for pronunciations of French words, especially things I couldn’t find in the dictionary or that have sounds I’m bad at distinguishing.

I’ve enjoyed doing pronunciations in English (often cringing when I hear my own voice afterward, though). Hopefully they’ll prove useful to someone along the way, as I’ve found the pronunciations by the French-speaking members so helpful, myself. After careful consideration, I’ve been forced to admit that English pronunciation is even more convoluted than French pronunciation…

Q: What did you like most?

A: Forvo has also been a great place to interact with other members, sharing information about dialects and discussing odd linguistic tid-bits. I enjoy learning about variations within English as much as I enjoy fiddling around with foreign languages, and Forvo is certainly a great forum for that.

In the following weeks we expect to bring you more Forvo “interviews”.

We have introduced a new lovely feature: translations for each word. Thanks to the Google Translate service, now from every word page you will see that word translated from the original language (more than 50 languages in google´s tool) to the interface language (spanish and english at this moment).

So if translations are not perfect blame Google :)

All Forvo members hope you will enjoy and learn more with this new feature.

We have redesigned the language page to help you find who are the best pronouncers in every language. We called these users “The A-team“, so “If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire them. ”

See an example on Russian.

1. Ermenegildo Zegna
2. Gnocchi
3. Bvlgari
4. Lamborghini
5. Dolce & Gabbana
6. Versace
7. Moschino
8. Salvatore Ferragamo
9. Caprese
10. Bolognese

The spanish bank BBVA is running a contest for innovating projects. We are competing there, well, we are competing in tons of them ;) but this time we are lucky enough to be selected for the voting phase. So, if you want to help Forvo a little more, just place your vote here (no registration required) or using the widget below. Thanks everyone for your votes!