Translations
Problem
I’d like to be able to offer my application in other languages, but I only speak and write English.
Solution
Facebook has made their amazing Translations app available to all developers. When added to your FBML, the following family of tags represents the Translations capability on your pages:
fb:intlWrap content you want to make translatable in this tag.
fb:intl-tokenReplaces a token contained within an
fb:intltag with its content.fb:tagRenders an HTML tag that has translatable attributes.
fb:tag-attributeContains the translatable attributes of an HTML tag specified by the enclosing
fb:tagtag.fb:tag-bodyContains the contents of an HTML tag specified by an enclosing
fb:tag.fb:dateRenders a locale-specific date based on the settings of the viewing user.
fb:fbml-attributeContains and makes translatable the value of an attribute of an FBML tag.
The Translations app isn’t intended to provide translations for user-generated content within your application (which you hopefully have if you’ve built a good Facebook app), but rather for all of your static text (application description, About Page content, etc.), FBML content, Notifications, requests, and Feed stories.
Using the tags is quite simple and will become second nature as you write new FBML. Assuming you haven’t built a gargantuan app with hundreds of pages, you should be able to go back and retrofit the Translations tags fairly quickly. As an example, consider this FBML:
Share a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with <fb:name ...