OK so I have been working on an app that will be available in multiple languages.
I have managed to get it working in the main languages, such as French, German, Spanish and English.
I have also now managed to get the app to use different regions within a language such as en_GB, en_US etc etc so all is good - thanks to this guide:
http://hamishrickerby.com/2010/07/23/iphone-ipad-localizations-regions/
One of the most important languages for me is Welsh. Apple allows me to set my iPhone to welsh by choosing British English as my language and region format as Welsh (United Kingdom).
I have created the Welsh language localisation within my app and translated my bits but I don't seem to be able to apply it.
My idea was that if the users language was set to British English that I could have a button on the main view that would allow the user to chose Welsh. Is this possible and what would be the best way to implement it.
Ideally if the user has already set their language to British english and has the region format to welsh they will get the welsh language version of the app just like the french would automatically get the french language version and the spanish will get the spanish version of the app etc but as most welsh speaking users will have their phone set to United Kingdom as they are not aware of the Welsh Region setting in iOS.
I would like the app to detect if the current language is British English and display a button on the home screen where the user can switch to Welsh Language. I have managed to display this button (only if user language is British English) but have no idea how to link it to change the language?
Anyone have any ideas or maybe a suggestion on the best way to implement my goal.
Thanks in advance.
Unfortunately, as you've identified, Welsh isn't a fully supported language on iOS. Until Apple supports it properly, you'll have to implement a bit of a workaround.
It seems as though the main solution is to have both English and Welsh .strings files (like you would with other languages), but manually load the required language, using
[[NSBundle mainBundle] localizedStringForKey:yourString value:#"" table:#"Welsh"];
#"Welsh" could be another language there, depending on what you want to load. You'll have to implement some control within your app so that users can change the language themselves. Check out the example project linked to in this blog post by translation company Applingua - it shows one way of encapsulating this code into a language provider class.
Related
I have an app that is made in different languages using localization:
The problem that I have, is that the user also needs to have the region of his phone set to India. If the user's phone is in Hindi but is located in the United States, it will use the default English strings.
How can I use the Hindi strings even if the region is in a different country?
When you added your localization, you chose "Hindi (India)." You wanted to just select "Hindi" which is unconstrained:
It's probably easiest to fix this by adding a "hi" localization, copying your strings to it, and then deleting the "hi-IN" localization.
Say you have a localized resource that is in en.lproj and Base.lproj. If someone runs the app in, say, Spanish, is the Base.proj resource loaded over the en.lproj one?
Generally, what happens when an resource for the user's preferred language is not found, and when does the system fall back to Base resources?
Base is used whenever the translation for the user language is not define. Including if you have done 99% of string transition to "French", and you should display one of this 1% left on a French iPhone => the base will be use.
I like to have base = english. If a user did not have is natural language translated, he will se the english version.
Some people think different. We all have our reason ;-)
They said, use "code" for base, if you miss to translate you will see code instead of english. Easy to "debug" missing translation.
I said, if you miss to translate a string, the user will see the english version. He will probably said "Oh no ! again this english ! This soft is not well translate !". I already be in that situation 1000 times may be more. Nethertheless, I was able to translate the english sentence to my natural language... not sure to be able to translate a "code"...
If none of your defined languages is not equal to the one which the user has its phone language, then the Base takes place.
Suppose you have 3 localizations, english, spanish and french, and of course you have your based localize. If french or spanish or english are not the phone language, then the base specified by you will be set.
I am in the process of developing an iOS application that needs to tell the server it communicates with the current language being used on the iPhone/iPad. I am currently using:
[[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0]
However because the App is a word based game in the case of English being used (en) this is not enough to go on, I need to be able to distinguish between en_GB and en_US (and potentially other languages in the future).
Currently I have two ways of doing this:
1) Use the currentLocale setting to get the current country code of the device and combine that with the preferredLanguage, however this is rather hacky.
2) Roll my own page to allow the user to change the language in App.
I am leaning towards option 2 but it will involve a fair chunk of work.
My question is, is there a better way of achieving this?
iOS does include British English (en_GB), as opposed to US English (en), so in this particular example you could rely on the user's iOS language setting alone. If the user has selected British English and your application includes it in its list of localizations, then you should see en_GB using your line of code.
But of course, if you wish to support a language that iOS doesn't itself expose, you're stuck with having to provide your own picker.
Thanks to #Jano, I know how to localize application strings based on the country in which the application is running - in my question : How to localize text based on criterion other than language. The answer is to take these strings out of the Settings.bundle and bring them into the application, where they can be localized in whatever manner the developer requires.
My question now is: is it possible to localize the application name (the name under the app icon) using a criterion other than language? I think that doing this on a language basis is well understood - there are several questions and answers on Stack Overflow and elsewhere which discuss localizing the BundleDisplayName.
But my customer would like to give the application a different name in the various European countries in which he expects to market it, and some of these countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), share a language.
Xcode allow you to add de-AT, de-DE and de-CH localization files, but I have just tried this out and looks like it has no effect. I tried to change device language to German and then switch region format between Austria, Germany and Switzerland, but the bundle display name didn't change from English. When I added de (without a -XX suffix for country) it changed to German name, again ignoring region format. I'm a bit confused as I was under impression we could use those country-specific localizations like that. I hope someone offers a better solution, but until then I would suggest a workaround: building 3 targets, one for each country, and submitting them to AppStore and only making them available in their respective countries.
I am uploading a new App which is localized in 10 languages to the Apple AppStore.
Apple offers several languages with country specific options such as
Canadian French
Mexican Spanish
Brazilian Portuguese
We have set up localizations for French, Spanish and Portuguese.
On the iPhone, an App defaults to the closest language available. For example, an iPhone set to "Brazilian Portuguese" will use the regular Portuguese localization instead of the English default localization.
Is it the same on the AppStore? Do we need to also set "Mexican Spanish" or will customers from Mexico default to Spanish (instead of the defaulting to English)?
edit:
To clarify, this is not about whether we should localize to these dialects (we already decided against that when making the app), but whether the store page shown to the customer will be displayed in the closest dialect or english.
For example, will a Mexican user automatically see the Spanish version (the closest language) or the default language (English)?
I can confirm that the closest available language is selected by the App Store.
For example in the Mexican App Store if you have Spanish set up but not Mexican Spanish, Spanish will show up. This app has Spanish activated on iTunes but not Mexican Spanish and everything is in Spanish on the Mexican App Store.
https://itunes.apple.com/mx/app/id502222888
The language that is displayed on the App Store depends also on the user's language settings since they set the language query parameter. The URL format used by Apple with the language query parameter is:
https://itunes.apple.com/tw/app/id502222888?l=zh where tw is Taiwan and l=zh is the Chinese language.
The language query parameter is not always used.
For example in Germany, even if you set the another language via the query parameter it will be ignored and the German language will show up since it is the only language for that location:
https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/id502222888?l=fr
While in Canada that has both English or French, you can use the language query parameter:
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/id502222888?l=fr
To answer my own question: No, Apple does not automatically choose the closest language on the AppStore.
Here is an example of the Mexican AppStore using English despite standard Spanish being present:
Let's start with Spanish. As far as I know Spanish (Mexico) is considered International Spanish, which is fairly similar to English (USA).
I don't know about French, so I might be wrong here but I believe French (France) would be perfectly understandable by the Canadians.
As for Portuguese... Well, in this case you did something that I believe should be the other way round. I read on the Internet that Portuguese government (?) recently pass a reform so that regular Portuguese would be similar in terms of grammar with Brazilian Portuguese. You see as Brazil is much bigger country, Brazilian version is much more common. Therefore I don't think it is OK to use regular Portuguese in Brazil (there might be some problems) but it is probably just about right to use Brazilian Portuguese in Portugal.
There is also the case of Chinese. As in Simplified vs Traditional. If you ever going to localize your application into Chinese (not the easiest thing to do), Traditional is the one to be used in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao whereas Simplified is the one they use in China (mainland) as well as in Singapore.
It would be very inappropriate to confuse them (i.e. try to sell Simplified version to the Taiwanese).