How to handle text localization without going insane?
Every application has those embedded texts: You need to display an error message, have some basic text, etc. When you want to use the same strings for both your iOS and android applications you typically have to do some nice and frustrating copy/pasting.
At least I did.
No more:
Requirements
- Install Twine
gem install twine -
Xcode and Android Studio
Conventions
We need a simple naming convention for our localization keys to work on both platforms. I personally prefer lowercase with underscore.
And for iOS there must not be any keys in interface builder files (because of Km8-1Y-A80.text)
Setup
Start from iOS
if you wanna start with an android project, please goto the android section below.
Generate Strings from source files:
genstrings -o en.lproj *.m
You should now find a Localizable.strings file in your project folder.
Now generate a twine file out of the apps strings
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touch strings.txt twine consume-all-string-files strings.txt ./en.lproj --developer-language en --consume-all --consume-comments |
Generate the xml file for android:
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twine generate-string-file strings.txt path-to-android-projects-string.xml |
Now you should have a file containing the generated strings in your android project.
Start from Android
if you wanna start with an iOS project please goto the iOS section above.
Generate a twine strings file:
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twine consume-all-string-files strings.txt path-to-android-config --developer-language en --consume-all --consume-comments |
Generate the .strings file for iOS:
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twine generate-string-file strings.txt path-to-ios-projects-localizable.strings |
Simple Workflow
Edit the content of twine’s string.txt and export the platform specific translation/string files.
For UI editing please refer to https://github.com/mobiata/twine/tree/v0.6.0#user-interface
Advanced (automated) Workflow
A proposed automatic solution is to embed the strings.txt as a git subproject in the respective repos of iOS and android.
Now for every new build, the platform specific resource files will be generated.
Both iOS and android build processes allow you to add so called buildsteps:
iOS Workflow setup
Add the repo with the strings.txt as git submodule
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git submodule add your-translation-git-repo ./twine |
The needed setup for iOS is explained here: https://github.com/mobiata/twine/tree/v0.6.0#twine-and-your-build-process
Android workflow setup
Add the repo with the strings.txt as git submodule
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git submodule add your-translation-git-repo ./twine |
Add the following task to app/build.gradle:
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task generateStrings { String script = 'if hash twine 2>/dev/null; then twine generate-string-file ../twine/strings.txt ./src/main/res/values/generated_strings.xml; fi' exec { executable "sh" args '-c', script } } |
Now every time you build your app the strings are generated from the twine repo
Update strings file
With every update to the central strings repository you have to pull the changes in the submodules.
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cd twine git pull |
Build your projects and enjoy the correct strings
There is an interesting service that provides sdk and online update for ios apps translation: http://localize.io
You can manage you localisation files without the need to think about which version of the app you’re updating. You also don’t need to recompile the app each time you add a new language.
Nice platform, but I can’t find any information for android.
The whole point of this exercise was to provide a ‘single point of edit’ for shared strings on both platforms.