Learning Android™ Application Programming: A Hands-On Guide to Building Android Applications

Starting with a Rough Machine Translation

The first step in making your app work in another language is to translate the strings in the resources file. Initially, you can try machine translation, because it generally requires little effort. However, you shouldn’t rely on it. It often does a poor job, and the translated text could be wrong, with perhaps embarrassing results.

1. The Google Translator Toolkit, shown in Figure 11.1, is a good way to start translating your app, because it understands Android resource files. In a browser, go to http://translate.google.com/toolkit, and click the Upload button. Upload the res/values/strings.xml file, and select several languages to target, including French. You can select other languages later, so don’t ...