At addhen, localization is something we take very seriously when developing an Android application. Though most of our apps aren’t translated into most languages, we make sure we build apps that are localizable. That way in the future when we’re ready to open the app to more regions and languages, we already have a strong foundation. I’m going to share some of our best practices for localization support. If you’re not familiar with what internationalization and localization are, I’ll go ahead to define them.
Internationalization is the process of designing an application to make it possible for it to be localized to a particular region and language.
Localization is the act of making a product suited for a particular region and language that conforms to the region’s locale.
Locale is a set of parameters that defines the user’s language and region.
Never hardcode user facing strings
At all cost we avoid hardcoding all static strings the user would have to see. We make sure we have them in their respective string resource file. For example,
mLableTextView.setText("Quantity"); This makes it hard to replace in the future when we want to translate Quantity into more languages. Instead we put that in a string resource and reference the name when setting the TextView’s text. In res/values/string.xml we’ll have
<string name="quantity">Quantity</string>
Then reference it in code as mLableTextView.setText(R.string.quantity); using the string name. This way, when we want to translate Quantity into French we’ll have to put it in res/values-fr/string.xml where -fr is the resource qualifer for the French language.
Load fonts as localized string
When we make use of custom fonts, we don’t hardcode that either in the view. This makes it possible for us to easily support fonts for a particular language. In the same way as we define string, we put the font name in a string resource file.
<string name="custom_font_name">fonts/custom_font.ttf</string>
Then declare a styleable attribute that can be referenced in the View’s implementation. This also makes it possible to set the font in a layout resource file.
<!-- Inside res/values/attrs.xml -->
<declare-styleable name="CustomView">
<attr name="fontName" format="String"/>
</declare-styleable>
In our custom view implementation, we load and cache the font in memory. See sample code below.
public CustomView(Context context, AttributeSet attributeSet) {
super(context, attributeSet);
initCustomFont(context, attributeSet);
}
private void initCustomFont(Context context, AttributeSet attributeSet) {
final TypedArray attrs = context.obtainStyledAttributes(attributeSet, R.styleable.CustomView);
final String fontName = attrs.getString(R.string.CustomView_fontName);
final TypefaceManager typefaceManager = new TypefaceManager();
final Typeface typeface = typefaceManager.getTypeface(context,fontName);
if (typeface != null) {
super.setTypeface(typeface);
}
}
// Manages loading and caching of the font
private static class TypefaceManager {
private final LruCache<String, Typeface> mCache;
public TypefaceManager() {
mCache = new LruCache<>(3);
}
public Typeface getTypeface(final Contenxt context, final String filename) {
Typeface typeface = mCache.get(filename);
if (typeface == null) {
typeface = Typeface.createFromAsset(context.getAssets(), filename);
mCache.put(filename, typeface);
}
return typeface;
}
}
In our xml res/layout/label_item.xml we then set the font as shown below.
<com.package.name.widget.CustomView
...
app:fontName="@string/custom_font_name"/>
Right-To-Left (RTL) support enabled
We enable RTL since it doesn’t really require much work. It makes our layouts ready for switching to an RTL language. In the application manifest, we enable layout mirroring by setting android:supportsRtl to true.
<application
...
android:supportsRtl="true"/>
If we’re targing API 17 and above, we replace all left/right layout properties to the new start/end equivalents. So paddingLeft becomes paddingStart and paddingRight becomes paddingEnd. Same for margin directional properties. It requires a bit of work when targeting below API 17. Instead of supporting different layouts which makes maintenance a headache, we put these properties in a style resource for the different API versions. See sample code below.
<!-- res/values-v17/styles.xml targets API level 17+ -->
<style name="TextView.Label">
...
<item name="android:layout_marginStart">16dp</item>
<item name="android:layout_marginEnd">16dp</item>
...
</style>
<!-- res/values/styles.xml targets API 17- -->
<style name="TextView.Label">
...
<item name="android:layout_marginLeft">16dp</item>
<item name="android:layout_marginRight">16dp</item>
...
</style>
<!-- res/layout/screen_layout.xml -->
<com.package.name.widget.CustomView
style="@style/TextView.Label"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
app:fontName="@string/custom_font_name"/>
Localize line heights dimensions
At all cost we don’t hardcode value for the android:lineSpacingMultiplier property. This way, it’s easier to localize line heights value. Some langagues will need bigger line spacing than others.
<!-- res/values/integers.xml -->
<resources>
<item name="line_height" format="float" type="integer">0.5</item>
</resources>
<!-- res/values-fr/integers.xml -->
<style name="TextView.Label">
<item name="line_height" format="float" type="integer">1.0</item>
</style>
<!-- res/layout/screen_layout.xml -->
<com.package.name.widget.CustomView
style="@style/TextView.Label"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:lineSpacingMultiplier="@integer/line_height"
app:fontName="@string/custom_font_name"/>
Test using pseudolocalization
Since most of our apps aren’t translated into different languages, we take advantage of pseudo-localization provided by Android. Pseudo-localization in general is a method of testing the internationalization of text while maintaining its readability. We do this more to expose issues regarding length and flow of text and layout issues. In our debug builds, we enable pseudolocalization by setting pseudoLocalesEnabled to true
// In build.gradle file
buildTypes {
debug {
pseudoLocalesEnabled true
}
}
Then configure a device to make use of the en_XA locale. This gives us texts which are longer and with accents. And to test the layout mirroring (RTL), we configure the device to another locale ar_XB. This shifts everything from Left-Right to Right-Left.
On a compatible Android device go to settings and select Language & Input > Language > English (XA) to enable the en_XA locale.
Go to settings and select Language & Input > Language > (XB) العربية to enable the ar_XB locale.
As good practice, we make sure before we make a final release to the Playstore, we’ve tested our apps in at least 3 or more different languages to visually inspect how the app will behave in these langagues. Though this gives us extra workload it makes us confident that, our app doesn’t only function well but it’s appears good in other languages.
The android documentation has a checklist for localization that you can go through to make your app localizable which I recommend reading.