I want to make application, that will support languages with resources depending of actual localization and country code. According to Documentation I need to change resources to format i.e. values-en-rUS, and in that configuration app sucessful compile and proper flag image in resources is set it up but I dont know what format should be write in Locale variable to change resources. I try en_US , en-rUS , en-US but does doesnt work correctly. In my previous version with resources like values-en changing Locale of the app language to en the resources are updating correctly.
Locale for values-en-rUS can be obtained by new Locale("en", "US"), this will get instance of "en_US" locale (matching values-en-rUS).
Don't use new Locale("en_US") this will produce "en_us". That doesn't match values-en-rUS. Also new Locale("en-US") will not work.
From API level 21, there's handy Locale.forLanguageTag(String) method. It returns a locale for the specified IETF BCP 47 language tag string, which is "en-US" in this case. So you can use Locale.forLanguageTag("en-US).
Not totaly sure of what you asking but if you want to add languages you need to create indeed to create the write folder but in that format : <resource type>-b+<language code>[+<country code>]
example : value-b+en+US
Then you can add the strings.xml file in each folder to what you want to display. You can find all the documentation here.
Related
The app I work on will be launched in the UK, US and AU. I have strings.xml in values-en-rUS , values-en-rAU and values folders. I have certain strings for ex "Zipcode" which will only be used in the US so I have added them to strings.xml in values-en-rUS. I have "Postcode" as the equivalent in AU and UK strings.xml files.
This works fine as long as the device locale is set correctly ie, English(United states) in United states. If the device is in English (Australia) and the user is using the app in United states the solution fails.
Is there a standard approach for displaying a specific string irrespective of the device locale? Any help is appreciated
I think you are using the wrong localization.
values-en-rUS you are defining resources in english (locale en) for mobiles situated in the US region.
If you use values-en_US instead it should correctly work for the locale en_US.
To better understand how the fallback between the different locales will happen consider this link:
Android doc
The correct Java SE standard usage is:
Locale: Properties file name part:
Locale("en", "US") values_en_US
Locale("en", "AUS") values_en_AUS
Locale("en", "UK") values_en_UK
Best have a Locale("en") / values_en and values too.
There are some Locale constants. A small prototype will see whether this works satisfactory.
My country (Spain) has several languages (es-ES, ca-ES, gl-ES, eu-ES). We won't add all the languages for now so we would like to use main language in Spain, i.e. Spanish (es). We would like to display the /values-es/strings.xml when the user has selected one of the other languages in the country. How can we do that?
Oh, and we would like to use English as the default language (/values/strings.xml).
It would be great to have something like /values-ES/strings.xml, but I suppose that can't be done because the first code should be the language code.
Now we are copying the /values-es/strings.xml file to the other folders (values-ca, values-gl and values-eu) but we'd like to avoid that.
I think that you should have only 2 folders with 1 strings.xml for each other:
res/values/strings.xml this resource will contains your text in English ;
res/values-es/strings.xml this resource will contains your text in Spanish .
When your app is installed on a device which is configured with the Italian language, it will use the file resource on case 1.
When your app is installed on a device which is configured with a Spanish language (and there are a lot of Spanish language out there, think about South America countries), it will use the file resource on case 2.
You can do it easily with Android Studio:
right-click on res folder
go to New > Android resource directory
a window will show you some options; pick Locale and then click on the button with those symbols "> >"
then on the Language list, pick es: Spanish and then click OK, as showed in the image below (note that by default the Specific Region Only has Any Region selected!)
By experience: I never faced up a Breton, Corsican or Provençal users claiming for a full translation of the application in their language (by default the app has English as default and French).
I would say you want to do something like this.
if (Locale.getDefault().getISO3Country().equals("ESP"))
{
Locale[] locales = Locale.getAvailableLocales();
for (Locale loc : locales)
if (loc.getISO3Language().equals("SPA"))
{
Locale.setDefault(loc);
break;
}
}
Note: I'm not sure if I got the ISO3 language and country codes right. And you'll also have to do something for the (rare?) situation that the es-ES locale is not available.
If you are trying to override Catalan with Spanish, you should probably have that in the values-ca/strings.xml file.
The way to do what you are asking is to provide the resources in the appropriate mobile country code resource folder, which takes precedence over language-region resources.
Assume that you have the following situation:
The application code calls for R.string.text_a
Two relevant resource files are available:
res/values-mcc404/strings.xml, which includes text_a in the application's default language, in this case English.
res/values-hi/strings.xml, which includes text_a in Hindi.
The application is running on a device that has the following configuration:
The SIM card is connected to a mobile network in India (MCC 404).
The language is set to Hindi (hi).
Android will load text_a from res/values-mcc404/strings.xml (in English), even if the device is configured for Hindi. That is because in the resource-selection process, Android will prefer an MCC match over a language match.
The MCC for Spain is 214.
(See Localization)
I found another tricky solution: hard links. Although it doesn't remove whole problem completely, at least it protects you from routine task of copying file across multiple directories or making equal changes in all existed files with risk of miss something.
But I must admit that there is some caveats:
1) Some IDE does not support working with hard links by-default. Intellij IDEA and Android Studio will break your hard links if you don't disable "safe write" option in settings.
2) Most version control systems also doesn't support hard links by default. Let's take git for example. It will break existing hard links after reverting or merging changes.
Currently, I'm using batch file for restoring hard links after they get broken by git.
In a general term, there should be only one strings.xml file under values folder containing the relevant data.
If we explicitly specify different values folder like values-ca,values-es, whenever there are setting changes in the android device, it will look to the particular folder and take the appropriate strings value.
If the requirement is keep uniform text means better have only values->strings.xml file alone with the required data.
But with this approach multilingual apk is not possible i.e. for other country different language is expected, there will be variations again. So wherever we need uniform language, lets go with single folder alone and wherever multilingual is preferred, we can have multiple values-es,values-ca folder like that.
Hope that helps
How about trying to set it in java, instead of using strings.xml.
As doing it programatically gives you more flexibility at run-time.
Configuration config = new Configuration(getResources().getConfiguration());
Locale locale = Locale.getDefault();
String country = locale.getCountry();
String language = locale.getLanguage();
if (country.equalsIgnoreCase("ES") && (language.equalsIgnoreCase("ca") || language.equalsIgnoreCase("gl") || language.equalsIgnoreCase("eu"))) {
locale = new Locale("es");
}
config.setLocale(locale);
And then you can simply have one /values-es/strings.xml for all the ES country languages.
I am trying to get my app to use a different String for hebrew.
what I did was I created a different filder in "res" calles "values-iw" and places a "strings.xml" file in there.
when i do Locale.getDefault(); i get "heb-il" which by google is ok "Java uses several deprecated two-letter codes. The Hebrew ("he") language code is rewritten as "iw".
but when I am doing getResources().getString(R.string.deafult_sleeping); I am getting the default string and not the one in "values-iw".
Why is that?+
Most Devices still use "he". I think alot of Android uses "he" and it is mapped to "iw" in the compiler. You should make both Folders to be safe.
Ps. you can check which Code you are getting with
Locale.getDefault().getLanguage();
Also see Locale code for Hebrew / Reference to other locale codes?
Maybe this will help sombody with changes of Local:
Locale.getDefault().getLanguage().equals(new Locale("he").getLanguage())
I have seen several conflicting tables that show localizations and what names they should take
A lot of them suggest that there are versions of the language for each country, which is fine, for languages like English, Spanish and Chinese, where I can choose to make a values-en folder or a values-en_US folder if I want to make it more specific
but some other languages like greek have a locale name el_GR , can I just make a folder names values-el or does it HAVE to be values-el_GR
thats just an example and I don't trust the tables I have read, and the android developer guide does not nearly list the available locales
The folder name of Android string files is formatted as the following:
without region variant: values-[locale]
with region variant: values-[locale]-r[region]
For example: values-en, values-en-rGB, values-el-rGR.
In your case, you just need to create a folder values-el for the Greek translation, and values-el-rGR for the country-specific Greek translation.
Also, you can make use of the resources fallback mechanism in Android, to allow particular strings to be further translated locally.
For example, suppose you have a string called “R.string.title” and the locale is ‘el-GR’, Android will look for a value of “R.string.title” by searching the files in the following order:
res/values-el-rGR/strings.xml
res/values-el/strings.xml
res/values/strings.xml
Therefore, you can just put the country-specific translation inside the res/values-el-rGR/strings.xml, and let the res/values-el/strings.xml stores the general translations.
It can avoid duplicating your strings in different language files by utilizing this fallback mechanism.
Right click "res" folder in your project. Pick > New > Android resource file > Localization - and it will offer you all the possible Language and Locales options and even create required folders.
all can find in https://developer.android.com/index.html
in https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/providing-resources.html#AlternativeResources
the page descript multiple resouce define, like drawable , value
in https://developer.android.com/training/basics/supporting-devices/languages.html
the page provide Language res define，
it‘s import How Create Locale Directories and Resource Files .
the format is <resource type>-b+<language code>[+<country code>].
and the language code country code reference https://developer.android.com/reference/java/util/Locale.html
language
ISO 639 alpha-2 or alpha-3 language code, or registered language subtags up to 8 alpha letters (for future enhancements). When a language has both an alpha-2 code and an alpha-3 code, the alpha-2 code must be used.
You can find a full list of valid language codes in the IANA Language Subtag Registry (search for "Type: language").
https://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry/language-subtag-registry
country (region)
ISO 3166 alpha-2 country code or UN M.49 numeric-3 area code. You can find a full list of valid country and region codes in the IANA Language Subtag Registry (search for "Type: region").
https://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry/language-subtag-registry
Other reference： https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2
In my application, I need to display strings according to user locale selection. So, I put my strings.xml in values-en, values-ko, etc. How can I set locale us, australia i.e; values-en_US, values-en_AU? But it's throwing an error? Can any one tell me how to set these locales in my code?
Use res/values-en-rUS/ (replacing the _ with -r).
I am not clear with your question but if you are not sure as what name you need to for a specified locale refer to these links
http://developer.android.com/intl/de/reference/java/util/Locale.html
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/web/localizing-android-apps-draft
Android by default will take the resources from respective language that has been selected on the device/stimulator.
There is International Standard for Locale.....like values-en for English....values-ko for Korean...You cant modify the standard..It would work if you keep the folder name as values-ko.