= Lost in Translation ?

现在什么？_ _ _ هناك التطبيق لذلك!

Goal: Translating an App should not involve development, existing translations should be kept.

Problems, Tools, Best Practices.

== Problems

conflicting goals:

# not in focus of english speaking developer/tester # Apple tools are a bit odd, e.g. genstrings (not incremental) # xibs even worse to keep up-to-date # OMG: images! # hard to verify: fringe screens, bilingual devs

== Interlude: Localisation != Translation

# Localisation: prepare for translation (NSLocalizedString, dev task) # Translation: do translation (Localizable.strings, non-dev task) == Not in focus of english speaking developer/tester

# most apps + devs english ⇒ no goal, # annoying NSLocalizedString(@„foo“, @„bar) when developing, # but: expensive to hunt down when releasing,

# hard to find automatically - many **technical** strings
# ''NSLocalizedString'' & friends mandatory to leverage ''genstrings''

== So,

# make a habit to wrap every @„english text“ in NSLocalizedString(@„english text“, @„view hint“) whenever you meet one, # don't even bother about defining a mnemonic key but use just the english literal/format string. # (mnemonic: 2x the typing plus clueless translators)

== Apple tools are a bit odd

IMO there's no way around genstrings, despite it's shortcomings:

# doesn't update but overwrite, # UTF-16 - not (git) diff friendly, # macro NSLocalizedString doesn't tell source file.

=== Solution to 1 + 2

genstrings_incremental

---

Nice: no xml/xliff, just plain text word lists for translation.

== NSLocalizedString

/* TBA */
"TBA" = "TBA";

or

/* ContributeVC
   Feedback */
"Submit" = "Absenden";

which one would you choose?

NSLocalizedString(@"Submit", @"ContributeVC")

== Xcode project target membership

* we're not doing it 100% how Xcode likes it, * reason: define translations per target, not whole project * caution: keep Localizable.strings in sensible directory

== tl;dr

# no literals in xibs, inject text via IBOutlet, # prefer rendered text, avoid images, # wrap every user visible string whenever you find one, # always localise the format string, # always preserve existing, used translated phrases: genstrings_incremental.

== Thank you

for your attention.

* ADC: Programming Resources * ADC: NSShowNonLocalizedStrings & NSShowNonLocalizableStrings

[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setBool:YES forKey:@"NSShowNonLocalizedStrings"];
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setBool:YES forKey:@"NSShowNonLocalizableStrings"];

* genstrings_incremental * Google docs