CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidinternationalization
Genadinik
Genadinik

Reputation: 18629

Android - how do I translate my existing app into a different language?

If I wanted to translate an entire app (with button names and labels, and long text), is it better to just make a different app? Or is there a translation api I can use?

The reason I ask is that I tried going to the Goolge Play store and searching it in a different language, and it basically didn't understand what I wanted. So is there a different Goolge Play interface for different languages? Or some setting which I need to turn on?

How does this generally work? Thank you!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 3217

Answers (2)

Anthony
Anthony

Reputation: 2296

You don't want to make multiple versions of the application. In general this is accomplished by using a locale-specific dictionary for each translation you want to use, so instead of hard-coding strings in your application you would reference an element in the appropriate reference database instead, which is basically a list of all the strings you use in your application.

Here's some information I found specifically for Android development: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/localization.html

As for translating, natural language processing isn't far enough along yet to give good translations automatically, especially without context. You can try Google's translate API (https://developers.google.com/translate/) which uses some statistical methods, but even that will likely give you erroneous translations (I'm sure you've probably used Google or another service to translate something and out came something you could be pretty certain wasn't accurate). You might be able to use that as a first step to converting the application to different languages and, if your application is open source (or even if it isn't) ask for user input as to the accuracy of the various translations.

Hopefully that is helpful.

Upvotes: 1

guness
guness

Reputation: 6616

use all your strings from a file instead of hard coded way. the name of the file is strings.xml in values folder, and for another language what u need to do is to crate values-ru values-ch etc. folder and put your strings.xml inside the folder. and change the values. this was a fast approach to explain your solution. for expanded, detailed solution is here : http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/localization.html

Upvotes: 3

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