Ios – Automating Localizable.strings

automationinternationalizationiosiphonelocalization

So, in my project I have 10 languages, and 10 Localizable.strings files.
I just created Localizable.strings files, a file for each language. Now they contain "key" = "value" pairs, and both keys and values are in English (default language).

My languages are all translated and stay in Excel files.

The question is, how can I insert all my languages in those files faster than just copying each word manually or writing a script for that?
Maybe there is a existing tool for this already?
Thanks.

Best Answer

I found an easy way to compose localizable.strings files from Excel documents.

In the Excel document, in specific columns I insert " " = " " symbols. It's easy to do for all the words by dragging Excel cell down from the corner, so that it copies stuff from that cell to all the cells you drag it to. (sorry for messy explanation)

Thus the document contains the same symbols and words as localizable.strings does. Than I just copy everything to the text file, remove tabs, change extension to .strings. (no comments saved unfortunately).

EDIT: You can copy the stuff from Excel to Sublime Text, then Find & Replace tabs if any. Copy resulted stuff into proper Xcode .string file.

Related Solutions

Schema for a multilanguage database

What do you think about having a related translation table for each translatable table?

CREATE TABLE T_PRODUCT (pr_id int, PRICE NUMBER(18, 2))

CREATE TABLE T_PRODUCT_tr (pr_id INT FK, languagecode varchar, pr_name text, pr_descr text)

This way if you have multiple translatable column it would only require a single join to get it + since you are not autogenerating a translationid it may be easier to import items together with their related translations.

The negative side of this is that if you have a complex language fallback mechanism you may need to implement that for each translation table - if you are relying on some stored procedure to do that. If you do that from the app this will probably not be a problem.

Let me know what you think - I am also about to make a decision on this for our next application. So far we have used your 3rd type.

Php – List of All Locales and Their Short Codes

The importance of locales is that your environment/os can provide formatting functionality for all installed locales even if you don't know about them when you write your application. My Windows 7 system has 211 locales installed (listed below), so you wouldn't likely write any custom code or translation specific to this many locales.

Edit: The original list of locales has been edited to add additional locales that were not included before. Now 228 listed.

The most important thing for various versions of English is in formatting numbers and dates. Other differences are significant to the extent that you want and able to cater to specific variations.

af-ZA
am-ET
ar-AE
ar-BH
ar-DZ
ar-EG
ar-IQ
ar-JO
ar-KW
ar-LB
ar-LY
ar-MA
arn-CL
ar-OM
ar-QA
ar-SA
ar-SD
ar-SY
ar-TN
ar-YE
as-IN
az-az
az-Cyrl-AZ
az-Latn-AZ
ba-RU
be-BY
bg-BG
bn-BD
bn-IN
bo-CN
br-FR
bs-Cyrl-BA
bs-Latn-BA
ca-ES
co-FR
cs-CZ
cy-GB
da-DK
de-AT
de-CH
de-DE
de-LI
de-LU
dsb-DE
dv-MV
el-CY
el-GR
en-029
en-AU
en-BZ
en-CA
en-cb
en-GB
en-IE
en-IN
en-JM
en-MT
en-MY
en-NZ
en-PH
en-SG
en-TT
en-US
en-ZA
en-ZW
es-AR
es-BO
es-CL
es-CO
es-CR
es-DO
es-EC
es-ES
es-GT
es-HN
es-MX
es-NI
es-PA
es-PE
es-PR
es-PY
es-SV
es-US
es-UY
es-VE
et-EE
eu-ES
fa-IR
fi-FI
fil-PH
fo-FO
fr-BE
fr-CA
fr-CH
fr-FR
fr-LU
fr-MC
fy-NL
ga-IE
gd-GB
gd-ie
gl-ES
gsw-FR
gu-IN
ha-Latn-NG
he-IL
hi-IN
hr-BA
hr-HR
hsb-DE
hu-HU
hy-AM
id-ID
ig-NG
ii-CN
in-ID
is-IS
it-CH
it-IT
iu-Cans-CA
iu-Latn-CA
iw-IL
ja-JP
ka-GE
kk-KZ
kl-GL
km-KH
kn-IN
kok-IN
ko-KR
ky-KG
lb-LU
lo-LA
lt-LT
lv-LV
mi-NZ
mk-MK
ml-IN
mn-MN
mn-Mong-CN
moh-CA
mr-IN
ms-BN
ms-MY
mt-MT
nb-NO
ne-NP
nl-BE
nl-NL
nn-NO
no-no
nso-ZA
oc-FR
or-IN
pa-IN
pl-PL
prs-AF
ps-AF
pt-BR
pt-PT
qut-GT
quz-BO
quz-EC
quz-PE
rm-CH
ro-mo
ro-RO
ru-mo
ru-RU
rw-RW
sah-RU
sa-IN
se-FI
se-NO
se-SE
si-LK
sk-SK
sl-SI
sma-NO
sma-SE
smj-NO
smj-SE
smn-FI
sms-FI
sq-AL
sr-BA
sr-CS
sr-Cyrl-BA
sr-Cyrl-CS
sr-Cyrl-ME
sr-Cyrl-RS
sr-Latn-BA
sr-Latn-CS
sr-Latn-ME
sr-Latn-RS
sr-ME
sr-RS
sr-sp
sv-FI
sv-SE
sw-KE
syr-SY
ta-IN
te-IN
tg-Cyrl-TJ
th-TH
tk-TM
tn-ZA
tr-TR
tt-RU
tzm-Latn-DZ
ug-CN
uk-UA
ur-PK
uz-Cyrl-UZ
uz-Latn-UZ
uz-uz
vi-VN
wo-SN
xh-ZA
yo-NG
zh-CN
zh-HK
zh-MO
zh-SG
zh-TW
zu-ZA

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Schema for a multilanguage database

Php – List of All Locales and Their Short Codes

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