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Supporting Your App In 13 Languages

By Kee Nethery — January 29, 2016

Supporting Your App In 13 Languages

Providing users with localized versions of your app is a good thing. However, the though of offering support to users who don’t speak your language might be a little scary. Here are some tips that can ease those fears and also inspire trust and confidence in your non-English speaking app users:

  1. Have a separate version of your App Store descriptions, keywords, and FAQs for each language your app supports.

  2. While no one expects your company to have support personnel fluent in every language, it is good to inform your users what language(s) you do understand. Here is an English statement translated into other languages that you can use in your App Store description and in your support information:

    English:
    Although this app is in your language, please send questions or comments to us in the only language we understand, English.

    Chinese Simplified:
    尽管本应用程序以您的语言呈现，请务必以我们唯一了解的语言，英语发送您的问题或意见给我们。

    Chinese Traditional:
    儘管本應用程式以您的語言呈現，請務必以我們唯一瞭解的語言，英語發送您的問題或意見給我們。

    Dutch:
    Deze app is dan wel in je eigen taal, maar als je ons een vraag of opmerking stuurt, doe dat dan in de enige taal die wij begrijpen: Engels.

    French:
    Bien que cette application est traduite dans votre langue, s’il vous plaît envoyez-nous vos questions ou commentaires dans le seul langue que nous comprenons: anglais.

    German:
    Obwohl diese App auf Deutsch ist, möchten wir Sie bitten, Fragen oder Kommentare nur auf der Sprache zu schicken, die wir verstehen, nämlich Englisch.

    Italian:
    Anche se questa applicazione è tradotta nella sua lingua, si prega di inviarne domande o commenti nell’unica lingua che capiamo: inglese.

    Japanese:
    アプリは複数言語に対応していますが、質問やコメントはすべて英語でご記入ください。

    Korean:
    이 앱은 사용자의 언어가 지원되지만, 질문이나 의견은 영어로 보내주시기 바랍니다.

    Portuguese (Brazil):
    Embora este aplicativo esteja em português, envie perguntas ou comentários no único idioma que entendemos, ou seja, inglês.

    Romanian:
    Deși această aplicație este tradusă în limba dvs., vă rugăm să ne trimiteți întrebările și comentariile în singura limbă pe care o înțelegem: engleză.

    Russian:
    Хотя это приложение на вашем языке, пожалуйста присылайте вопросы и комментарии на единственном языке который мы понимаем, английском.

    Spanish:
    Aunque esta aplicación está en su idioma, por favor envíenos preguntas o comentarios en el único idioma que entendemos, inglés.

    Swedish:
    Även om den här appen är på svenska vill vi gärna att du skickar dina frågor och kommentarer till oss på det enda språk som vi förstår – engelska.

  3. Because your support replies will be in English, consider providing URLs for machine language translation (https://translate.google.com or http://www.bing.com/translator/) as a courtesy for users who do not use English as their first language.

App Store Says My Non-English App is in English

By Kee Nethery — January 12, 2016

App Store Says My Non-English App is in English

The App Store looks in your app for .lproj folders and uses those to see what languages your app supports. It does not matter what you tell the App Store, it looks inside the app to determine which languages your app supports. Without an .lproj folder the store typically defaults to English.

A properly named empty folder in your source code is all it takes to have the App Store know the language of your app.

There are several formats for naming the folder that indicates your app’s language:

  1. <ISO 639-1 two letter language code>.lproj

    For example, en.lproj indicates generic English, fr.lproj generic French, ja.lproj Japanese, and ko.lproj is Korean.

  2. <ISO 639-2 three letter language code>.lproj

    For example, eng.lproj indicates generic English.

  3. <ISO 639-1 or 639-2 language code>-<iso 3166-1 two letter region designator>.lproj

    For example, en-AU.lproj to indicate Australian English or fr-CA.lproj for Canadian French.

  4. <ISO 639-1 or 639-2 language code>-<iso 15924 four letter script code>.lproj

    For example, zh-Hant.lproj for Traditional Chinese or zh-Hans.lproj for Simplified Chinese.

For the App Store to correctly report the language of your app, there needs to be a properly named .lproj folder. An app supporting multiple languages will have an .lproj folder for each language.

The following links provide extensive lists of the ISO codes referenced above:

El Loco App To The Rescue

A key feature of the El Loco app is how it automatically cleans up and organizes your code into properly named folders. No more tedious searching and moving around of files. This alone can save you a bunch of time and allows you to focus on more important things… like actually developing your app!

Download El Loco App Today