Gratuitous Bonus
For a final bonus, let’s localize the name of the app itself. Your Info.plist has a special file (InfoPlist.strings) in which you can put string overrides for other languages. To give the app a different name in Spanish, open Supporting Files > InfoPlist.strings (Spanish) and insert the following:
"CFBundleDisplayName" = "Me Gusta";
This changes the name of the app as it appears on the Springboard.
Exercise: Internationalizing Audio files
If you’ve got this far, you should be comfortable with the basics of internationalization. This is a simple exercise where you’ll test out your newly acquired knowledge by taking two different audio files, one in english and the other on Spanish, and playing the appropriate file based on the user’s selected language.
Here is a brief description of the necessary steps:
- Download the sample audio files
- Copy box-en.wav first audio file to the project.
- Open the file inspector for the audio file and select the localize button, make sure you select english and spanish as the supported languages
- Rename the second audio file (box-es.wav) to be the same as the first one (box-en.wav) and copy it to the es.lproj folder.
- Make sure you select the “Replace File” option in the Finder prompt.
Where To Go From Here?
Here is the Final Project with all of the code you’ve written in the above tutorial.
Now that you know the basic techniques for internationalizing an iPhone app, add a foreign language to one of your existing apps or when designing your next app. As you have seen, it takes almost no time to implement, you open up your apps to a wider, more diverse audience, and your non-English speaking audience will thank you for it!
For the actual translation, you may be able to get away with using Google’s free translation service at http://www.google.com/translate, but the results are very hit or miss. If you can spare a few bucks, there are several third party vendors listed at the bottom of Apple’s Internationalization and Localization page. Pricing varies from vendor to vendor, but is typically less than 10 cents per word.
If you have any questions, or advice for others, regarding internationalization, please join in on the forum discussion below!
