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Change language programatically in Android

Is it possible to change the language of an app programmatically while still using Android resources?

If not, is it possible to request a resource in an specific language?

I would like to let the user change the language of the app from the app.

What is the significance of 1/1/1753 in SQL Server?

Why 1753? What do they have against 1752? My great great great great great great great grandfather would be very offended.

What is the second parameter of NSLocalizedString()?

What is the *comment parameter in:

NSString *NSLocalizedString(NSString *key, NSString *comment)

If I do this:

NSLocalizedString(@"Hello_World_Key", @"Hello World")

and have two versions of a Localizable.strings (English and Spanish), does each need the entry:

English.lproj/Localization.strings: @"Hello_World_Key" = @"Hello World";

Spanish.lproj/Localization.strings: @"Hello_World_Key" = @"Hola Mundo";

Isn't the English one redundant?

Is it possible to update a localized storyboard's strings?

I localized a part of my application with creating a base.lproj storyboard and 3 string files for it. It was a month ago and after that I added new view controller to app, but this controller's buttons and labels not appear in string files

Is it possible to update this 3 storyboard attached string files or I must add new strings translations programmatically with using NSLocalizableString and Localizable.strings?

Best practice using NSLocalizedString

I'm (like all others) using NSLocalizedStringto localize my app.

Unfortunately, there are several "drawbacks" (not necessarily the fault of NSLocalizedString itself), including

• No autocompletition for strings in Xcode. This makes working not only error-prone but also tiresome.
• You might end up redefining a string simply because you didn't know an equivalent string already existed (i.e. "Please enter password" vs. "Enter password first")
• Similarily to the autocompletion-issue, you need to "remember"/copypaste the comment strings, or else genstring will end up with multiple comments for one string
• If you want to use genstring after you've already localized some strings, you have to be careful to not lose your old localizations.
• Same strings are scattered througout your whole project. For example, you used NSLocalizedString(@"Abort", @"Cancel action") everywhere, and then Code Review asks you to rename the string to NSLocalizedString(@"Cancel", @"Cancel action") to make the code more consistent.

What I do (and after some searches on SO I figured many people do this) is to have a seperate strings.h file where I #define all the localize-code. For example

// In strings.h
#define NSLS_COMMON_CANCEL NSLocalizedString(@"Cancel", nil)
// Somewhere else
NSLog(@"%@", NSLS_COMMON_CANCEL);

This essentially provides code-completion, a single place to change variable names (so no need for genstring anymore), and an unique keyword to auto-refactor. However, this comes at the cost of ending up with a whole bunch of #define statements that are not inherently structured (i.e. like LocString.Common.Cancel or something like that).

So, while this works somewhat fine, I was wondering how you guys do it in your projects. Are there other approaches to simplify the use of NSLocalizedString? Is there maybe even a framework that encapsulates it?

Plurality in user messages

Many times, when generating messages to show to the user, the message will contain a number of something that I want to inform the customer about.

I'll give an example: The customer has selected a number of items from 1 and up, and has clicked delete. Now I want to give a confirmation message to the customer, and I want to mention the number of items he has selected to minimize the chance of him making a mistake by selecting a bunch of items and clicking delete when he only wants to delete one of them.

One way is to make the generic message like this:

int noofitemsselected = SomeFunction();
string message = "You have selected " + noofitemsselected + " item(s). Are you sure you want to delete it/them?";

The "problem" here is the case where noofitemselected is 1, and we have to write item and it instead of items and them.

My normal solution will be something like this

int noofitemsselected = SomeFunction();
string message = "You have selected " + noofitemsselected + " " + (noofitemsselected==1?"item" : "items") + ". Are you sure you want to delete " + (noofitemsselected==1?"it" : "them") + "?";

This gets quite long and quite nasty really fast if there are many references to the numbers plurality inside the code, and the actual message gets hard to read.

So my questions is simply. Are there any better ways of generating messages like this?

EDIT

I see a lot of persons has got very hung up in the case that I mentioned that the message should be displayed inside a message box, and has simply given an answer of how to avoid using the message box at all, and that is all good.

But remember that the problem of pluralization also apply to texts other places in the program in addition to message boxes. For example, a label alongside a grid displaying the number of lines selected in the grid will have the same problem regarding pluralization.

So this basically apply to most text that is outputted in some way from programs, and then the solution is not as simple as to just change the program to not output text anymore :)

Schema for a multilanguage database

I'm developing a multilanguage software. As far as the application code goes, localizability is not an issue. We can use language specific resources and have all kinds of tools that work well with them.

But what is the best approach in defining a multilanguage database schema? Let's say we have a lot of tables (100 or more), and each table can have multiple columns that can be localized (most of nvarchar columns should be localizable). For instance one of the tables might hold product information:

CREATE TABLE T_PRODUCT (
  NAME        NVARCHAR(50),
  DESCRIPTION NTEXT,
  PRICE       NUMBER(18, 2)
)

I can think of three approaches to support multilingual text in NAME and DESCRIPTION columns:

1. Separate column for each language

   When we add a new language to the system, we must create additional columns to store the translated text, like this:

   CREATE TABLE T_PRODUCT (
     NAME_EN        NVARCHAR(50),
     NAME_DE        NVARCHAR(50),
     NAME_SP        NVARCHAR(50),
     DESCRIPTION_EN NTEXT,
     DESCRIPTION_DE NTEXT,
     DESCRIPTION_SP NTEXT,
     PRICE          NUMBER(18,2)
   )
   

2. Translation table with columns for each language

   Instead of storing translated text, only a foreign key to the translations table is stored. The translations table contains a column for each language.

   CREATE TABLE T_PRODUCT (
     NAME_FK        int,
     DESCRIPTION_FK int,
     PRICE          NUMBER(18, 2)
   )
   
   CREATE TABLE T_TRANSLATION (
     TRANSLATION_ID,
     TEXT_EN NTEXT,
     TEXT_DE NTEXT,
     TEXT_SP NTEXT
   )
   

3. Translation tables with rows for each language

   Instead of storing translated text, only a foreign key to the translations table is stored. The translations table contains only a key, and a separate table contains a row for each translation to a language.

   CREATE TABLE T_PRODUCT (
     NAME_FK        int,
     DESCRIPTION_FK int,
     PRICE          NUMBER(18, 2)
   )
   
   CREATE TABLE T_TRANSLATION (
     TRANSLATION_ID
   )
   
   CREATE TABLE T_TRANSLATION_ENTRY (
     TRANSLATION_FK,
     LANGUAGE_FK,
     TRANSLATED_TEXT NTEXT
   )
   
   CREATE TABLE T_TRANSLATION_LANGUAGE (
     LANGUAGE_ID,
     LANGUAGE_CODE CHAR(2)
   )
   

There are pros and cons to each solution, and I would like to know what are your experiences with these approaches, what do you recommend and how would you go about designing a multilanguage database schema.

Localization of DisplayNameAttribute

I am looking for a way to localize properties names displayed in a PropertyGrid. The property's name may be "overriden" using the DisplayNameAttribute attribute. Unfortunately attributes can not have non constant expressions. So I can not use strongly typed resources such as:

class Foo
{
   [DisplayAttribute(Resources.MyPropertyNameLocalized)]  // do not compile
   string MyProperty {get; set;}
}

I had a look around and found some suggestion to inherit from DisplayNameAttribute to be able to use resource. I would end up up with code like:

class Foo
{
   [MyLocalizedDisplayAttribute("MyPropertyNameLocalized")] // not strongly typed
   string MyProperty {get; set;}
}

However I lose strongly typed resource benefits which is definitely not a good thing. Then I came across DisplayNameResourceAttribute which may be what I'm looking for. But it's supposed to be in Microsoft.VisualStudio.Modeling.Design namespace and I can't find what reference I am supposed to add for this namespace.

Anybody know if there's a easier way to achieve DisplayName localization in a good way ? or if there is as way to use what Microsoft seems to be using for Visual Studio ?

Lint: How to ignore " is not translated in " errors?

I can't compile/debug our Android app, because the localization files are not perfect yet.

Eclipse's validation tool Lint create errors saying:

newCardsOrderVals is not translated in ar, bg, ca, cs

Compiling/installing/running with Ant works fine, but I would like to use Eclipse to ease debugging.

Is there a way to turn off this particular check, or ideally make it a warning rather than an error?

I understand that before release we will really need to get localisation files right, but for the time being it is not a priority as the screens themselves are being modified very frequently.

How do I localize the jQuery UI Datepicker?

I really need a localized dropdown calendar. An English calendar doesn't exactly communicate excellence on a Norwegian website ;-)

I have experimented with the jQuery DatePicker, their website says it can be localized, however that doesn't seem to work.

I am using ASPNET.MVC, and I really want to stick to one javascript library. In this case jQuery.

The ajax toolkit calendar would be acceptable, if only it too would display Norwegian names.

Update: Awesome! I see I am missing the language files, a not so minor detail :-)

JavaScript for detecting browser language preference

I have been trying to detect the browser language preference using JavaScript.

If I set the browser language in IE in Tools>Internet Options>General>Languages, how do I read this value using JavaScript?

Same problem for Firefox. I'm not able to detect the setting for tools>options>content>languages using navigator.language.

Using navigator.userLanguage , it detects the setting done thru Start>ControlPanel>RegionalandLanguageOptions>Regional Options tab.

I have tested with navigator.browserLanguage and navigator.systemLanguage but neither returns the value for the first setting(Tools>InternetOptions>General>Languages)

I found a link which discusses this in detail, but the question remains unanswered :(

Get the current language in device

How can we get the current language selected in the Android device?

What's NSLocalizedString equivalent in Swift?

Is there an Swift equivalent of NSLocalizedString(...)? In Objective-C, we usually use:

NSString *string = NSLocalizedString(@"key", @"comment");

How can I achieve the same in Swift? I found a function:

func NSLocalizedString(
    key: String,
    tableName: String? = default,
    bundle: NSBundle = default,
    value: String = default,
    #comment: String) -> String

However, it is very long and not convenient at all.

What is the list of supported languages/locales on Android?

I'd like to know what to name my folder for different languages. Where can I find the supported list of languages on Android?

How to force NSLocalizedString to use a specific language

on iPhone NSLocalizedString returns the string in the language of the iPhone. Is it possible to force NSLocalizedString to use a specific language to have the app in a different language than the device ?