Multi-language Translation on Web Site

Question

i want to know how did facebook do it, did they add two different html+css or its just css only for changing there theme for different language or is there any special html attribute that changes the direction for complete site? following are two example, one english and other is arabic.

also i want to add another related question, which is, do you think they translated using some api like google api or did they hard code the translation (hiring someone to do the translation)?

Example picture 1

Example picture 2

Answer 1

The layout change facebook did is with css changes, they have two separate css, one for right to left and other is left to right, but if there was another language inside english or same vice verse , then they literally use html direction tag, to direct the message in box with right direction.

Answer 2

Depending on what technology you're using, this concept is known as string externalizing, string resourcing, string internationalization, localization etc. It is possible to do it all in CSS+Javascript, but that wouldn't be a very efficient way to go about doing things, especially if your site had a lot of strings and a lot of translations.

The HTML is different - just look at the HTML source if you're curious. The source is different because the in the code behind the website's front end, strings like "Login" are stored externally in a collection file that might look something like this:

## LANGUAGE = ENGLISH ##
LOGIN = "Login"
PASSWORD = "Password"

When you switch languages, the code behind the front end remains the same, but the code then uses a different external language file. For example, might be the Spanish file for the same application:

## LANGUAGE = SPANISH ##
LOGIN = "Iniciar sesión"
PASSWORD = "contraseña"

The idea is that in order to support new languages, all that needs to be done is to have the original identifier translated into a new language file. The translator doesn't have to be a programmer to translate the above snippit easily.

The final comment is that Facebook has enough money to pay professional translators to provide them with very good translations in many world languages. A long time ago, they allowed users to submit translations as a starting point. It generally is a bad idea to use a free translation API to translate application strings, because most of the time those APIs will not get the grammar correct. Translation APIs are most effective at getting the "overall meaning" of some words and phrases right, but it can also be terribly inaccurate at getting the most-correct word translation for any one particular idiom.