inzi.com

A cool way to localize your Android app

Dream Player from inzi.com is a Android only audio book player that we released yesterday. If you’ve not tried it, please give it a whirl!  One thing I really wanted to do with this application was to localize it as broadly as I could.

English, however, is the only language I know. All the space in my brain to learn another language is taken up by such things as C, C++, Objective C, Java, Assembly, and other computer Languages.

So, to localize Dream Player I used a really neat Eclipse plugin called Androlate. Androlate from Cicada Lane uses Google Translate to modify your Android project to provide localization. Granted, Google Translate isn’t always the most accurate. For me, though, I considered it better than nothing and much less expensive than hiring a professional translator.

Here’s how it works

For non Android developers, Android projects use various folder structures to contain resources.  You have folders such as libs, res, assets, and src.  Each holds something specific to your Android application. For Androlate, the important folder is the res folder.

Res is short for “resources”. Within the Res folder lie several folders, each containing data your application can reference.  For Android, text can be stored in a file called strings.xml.

Androlate will read your strings.xml file and use Google translate to create a new strings.xml file in the languages you select.  It’s not the quickest so you may have to let it bake overnight.

Granted, using Google Translate to localize your app may not be the best solution, but it is certainly a cost effective one.  Who knows, maybe your app will the source of the next “all your base are belong to us” meme!