Localizable.strings in iOS and not localized languages

Question

I'm building an application that will be localized in a future version, so I want to setup it to be ready for that.

At the moment I have only one language (French) and the fr.lproj folder contains the Localizable.strings with french translations for the related keys.

The problem is that If I set my device to English I don't receive the French default translations, but I see the Keys name that I use in NSLocalizedString.

For example if I try to get the title for a View Controller with:

NSLocalizedStrings(@"viewController_Title",nil);

The view controller, for device with English language shows "viewController_title" as title, while if I set the French language it works with no problem.

How can I deal with that?

Answer 1

Your project is set to use English as the default language.

In your Info.plist file: Set "Localization native development region" to French.

Missing translations will now fall back to French instead of English.

Answer 2

In this string file " Localizable.strings" you need to declare localization like this

French.strings

"viewController_Title" = "ViewController_Title_In_Frech";

English.strings

"viewController_Title" = "ViewController_Title_In_English";

You need to use the localized string like this

NSLocalizedStringFromTable(Key, LanguageType, @"N/A")

ex:

NSLocalizedStringFromTable("viewController_Title", English, @"N/A");

Note : Change the language type programmatically then you can get the respective Localized string. And localized declaration is must in the relevant strings file.

Answer 3

Your problem is that you need a language to fallback to. As far as I know, there is no official way around it, I've written methods like this in the past:

NSString * L(NSString * translation_key) {
    NSString * s = NSLocalizedString(translation_key, nil);
    if (![[[NSLocale preferredLanguages] objectAtIndex:0] isEqualToString:@"en"] && [s isEqualToString:translation_key]) {
        NSString * path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"en" ofType:@"lproj"];
        NSBundle * languageBundle = [NSBundle bundleWithPath:path];
        s = [languageBundle localizedStringForKey:translation_key value:@"" table:nil];
    }
    return s;
}

In this case, using L(@"viewController_Title"); would return the string for the default language, in this case being English.

Shameless self-citation

Answer 4

As mentioned in the other answers, By default English is used in case of missing language. There are two solutions:
1. Add localization string file for english as well (with the same content as french localized string has)
2. Or add the following code in main method of main.m before calling UIApplicationMain

//sets the french as default language
NSArray *lang = [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] stringArrayForKey:@"AppleLanguages"];
if ([lang count] > 0 && (![[lang objectAtIndex:0] isEqualToString:@"fr"]) ) {
     NSLog(@"language is neither de nor fr. forcing de");
     [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setObject:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"fr", @"en", nil] forKey:@"AppleLanguages"];
}