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Translating Android Package |
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Translating Android Package |
As Android packages are multi-lingual, it is important to choose the correct target language so that new translations are placed in the correct language folder. If the desired target language is not present, it should be added via the Add Language... option which is available by right-clicking on the Android package in the Alchemy CATALYST navigator. Alchemy CATALYST will display the list of available languages if a language that does not exist is selected.
The first step in localizing an Android package is to identify the strings.xml file. This file should be localized first as it is referenced by other files such as the layout and menu files. For any given target language, a values folder with the correct language naming convention should appear. If translating into Japanese for example, the strings.xml file in the folder values-ja-rJP should be translated using the String Editor.
Other files such as those in the menu and layout folders ideally will not have localizable text - they should only contain references to the strings.xml file. When inspecting these files, Alchemy CATALYST will pull any referenced text from the strings.xml, so a fully translated view is what is expected in menu and layout folders. However, if the strings.xml is completely localized and the layout or menu files still contain source language segments, it is likely these are hard coded strings that need to be localized directly in the layout or menu file.
When the segments in strings.xml are translated, they are available for view in Visual View mode by selecting the user-interface screens in the layout folder. User-interface screens that are list-driven may not have many controls to display in Visual View mode. Thumbnail view is useful for seeing at a glance which user-interface screens display text. Note: the rendering of Android screens takes place via emulation, so may take a number of seconds depending on machine performance.
Most of the localizable content should be contained in the strings.xml, but other folders such as raw can contain content that may need to be translated. The raw folder is not duplicated by default when adding languages, so if this needs to be localized, the raw folder should be copied for each additional language required. The language copies of the raw folder need to be named in the correct convention, e.g. raw-ja-rJP. To do this, one should extract the content of the raw folder to disk. Then add a new raw folder (appropriately named for that language) and from the files just extracted, insert those that need to be localized into the newly created language raw folder.
