How do you deal with people helping you translate your app?

Hi, how do you deal with people helping you translate your app through string.xml? Do you give them a built copy for their device or do you simply upload a new version for everyone to see but geared at them to test their translation? Reason I'm asking is because you can't use your phone to configure the app when you send them a version built for their device, you have to use the SDK, which could be overwhelming for some. It's the first time someone has offered his help. I sent him the English string.xml and they sent back the German version of it. So not sure how to proceed from there.

Thanks.

  • hi,

    into your project add

    resources-deu folder and put the german translated file into it

    then into manifest=>langages, turn "on" German

  • Yes, that I know but if I want him to verify his work, how do I give him access to the app? If I build a copy for him, it's not easy to adjust the parameters as you can't use the phone, you must use the SDK. If I publish the app, then users will be getting a bunch of updates as we create multiple version to adjust the texts to fit better on screen.

  • Well, ended up sending the PRG for his watch as well as the .SET like he has it configured. Worked well. In case somebody else stumble on this, here's an answer for you, since I didn't get any myself ;-)

  • I think you can try some online translation cooperation product. I remember there are some SASS.

  • Thanks, but in this case, it was someone that was offering to translate, which from past experience, is more suited than through translation software since often, it's just a word or two on screen which could have different meaning depending the context they are used in.

  • LOL. I got it. Just like the different translation for speed and pace in Chinese

  • Well depending on the language... For Hebrew or other languages with non-latin characters you can't test it in the simulator because you'll only see some squares instead of each character. But for German you totally can do it in the sim: you run locally and take a screenshot of each screen where any of the translated strings are used, and send them the screenshots. This way you can make sure that each place is "covered". They won't find most places when they try it on their watch because they'll only see part of the translations depending on their settings, time of day, etc...

    If there are no settings then you can send a prg for side loading, but as I wrote above they won't really test every string.

    If it has settings then probably you can upload the new version and ask them to tell you if something is not OK.

    Things that will sometimes not be OK are things like:

    - too long translation so the layout is very different from English - but this is something you can usually see in the simulator and send them a screenshot and ask them to shange the translation to somethig shorter.

    - bad concatenation: if your string in English was: "foo" and you concatenate to this something ad then you display it like: "foo: 12", then in theory there can be languages where this won't work because the proper way is "12 bar", so then you'll need to change your code to use placeholders:
    the default string should be "foo: $1$" and they can translate it to "$1$ bar". You'll just need to make sure that they don't have a mistake in how they added $1$ in the translation (like the have $1 only or $ or 1)

    - some languages are not supported by some devices, so it might happen that they don't know this and they translated it and then they won't see it, though this is probably rare, 'cause usually they already know this.

  • Thanks for the reply. I sent him the English strings.xml file to translate to German. From our conversation, he was quite thorough in his testing of the different texts and changed some of the meaning after our discussions. Not knowing German myself, there is not much I could do better myself.