Today, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art officially went bilingual on Twitter.
The museum launched a Twitter account, @enLACMA, that will provide Spanish-language tweets to online users. “We were looking for new ways for Spanish speakers to engage in the museum, and this is the next natural step,” said museum spokeswoman Allison Agsten.
LACMA’s tweets will be written in English for its original Twitter account, @LACMA, then will be translated into Spanish. The translation will be overseen by Marietta Torriente de León, a special-event planner at the museum, who also will monitor the account throughout the day. “Twitter is a conversation, so it’s critical that a staff member is there to respond,” Agsten said.
The museum said it tweets an average of three or four times a day and has been on Twitter since January.
So far, Culture Monster hasn’t found any other U.S. museums tweeting in Spanish. We talked to the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, which tweets only in English. MOLAA said most of its online followers are bilingual and prefer to receive communication in English.
Let us know if you come across any U.S. museums that have gone bilingual on Twitter. And while you’re at it, follow us on Twitter: @culturemonster.
— David Ng
Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/07/lacma-learns-to-tweet-en-espa%C3%B1ol.html
This is excellent news. I don’t know why twitter is not including spanish as an available language. Of course, you can write in whatever language you want but setting up the account when you don’t speak english can be complicated
I agree, it happened to a friend of mine. I had to help him and even explain what it was about. They should do something, translating the tool is not so complicated
Hi David
I agree that it’s important to have multiple languages to reach your audience. Many countries of the world are bilingual (like mine) or have many languages spoken. It’s good for the brain!