Q1. Tell us about Any.DO!

At Any.DO we focus our efforts on building simple yet effective productivity tools with a big focus on mobile platforms. Our award winning To-Do application was launched in November 2011 and since than has been downloaded by millions of users. The application has been listed as one of the best apps for 2012 by Apple and has been featured a couple of times in Google play. Our vision through our set of products is to help our users get their things done in smart contextual ways. We are building all kinds of smart tools (some of them yet to be released) to make this vision come true.

Q2. Please tell us about yourself.

I am one of the co-founders and the VP of Engineering here at Any.DO. I come from a technological background and take care of the entire development efforts of the company. Our localization process was

first based mostly on professional translators, making it a time consuming and expensive process. I was looking for an alternative service that will allow us to leverage our big community of users to help us localize our products faster, cheaper and to more languages.

Q3. How are you using Get Localization?

We have been using Get Localization for a few months now, and the results are amazing. We already got more than a hundred translators on the system translating our products and adding new languages that weren’t supported yet. We still can’t base our entire localization process on the community but hopefully as more and more translators join we will be less and less dependent on professional translation services.

Q4. Would you have localization tips or best practices that you would
like to share?

My biggest tip would be to try and get as many translators to the system as possible – our way to do it is to actively approach our most dedicated users suggesting they become a translator. We also wanted a better way to access our group of translators so we created a Google group for all of them so we can announce new releases of the app that requires translation (this works great – maybe in the future this will be a part of the Get Localization service).

Thanks Yoni for sharing your experiences with Get Localization!

Please check out Any.DO or why not support them by signing up for translations.

1. New toolbar design and search

We have removed the old menu bar and introduced a simple toolbar design that brings all the most needed features to one place. For example all the different search functions are now merged to one simple UI.

2. Better tag/placeholder management

You can now use shortcut (ALT+DOWN) to copy the next placeholder or tag to editor. You can also browse placeholders and tags using ALT+RIGHT and ALT+LEFT shortcuts. Or you can simply copy the placeholder by clicking it.

3. Screenshots

Additionally to context text, you can now add screenshots to provide more information about the string.

And much more…

You can now try the new version by clicking the link in the old editor. Old editor will retire on 6th of May. However premium project owners who contact support may continue using the old editor six months from now.

Get Localization for Mac is by far the simplest way to localize your iOS and Mac OS X apps that have been developed using Xcode. It manages all the files and it generates the strings files from your Objective-C and XIB files and updates them. It also syncs them between Get Localization and your Xcode project. Just select your .xcodeproj file, log-in and select the project where you wish to sync your strings files and you are ready to go.

But first let’s walk through how to internationalize your iOS or Mac OS X app. If you are familiar with internalization for iOS and OS X you can skip this part.

Prepare Your App for Localization

Objective-C (.m and .mpp files)

In order to localize your app you simply need to wrap all the hard-coded strings with an NSLocalizedString function call in your Objective-C files. For example:

[alert setInformativeText:NSLocalizedString(@"Hello World", 
@"This is a comment, it appears in Get Localization editor")];

XIB files

Get Localization for Mac will automatically manage all your XIB files and related strings files. All you have to do is to select  in Xcode which XIB files to localize.

1. First select the Xib file and then open File Inspector (typically the first document icon to the right, see screenshot)
2. Click the ‘Localize’ button. When Xcode asks if you want to localize, choose ‘yes’. It’s also recommended to select English here as a language as the BETA version only supports English as a master language at the moment.  You don’t need to add any languages here, rest will happen magically.
3. This will move the selected xib file to en.proj directory. This is normal and required by the process. Language specific folders and xib files are built automatically for you by Get Localization for Mac when you choose to sync the files.

That’s it. Now your app is ready for localization.

Localization Made Easy with Get Localization for Mac

Get Localization for Mac automates everything. It will

• Configure your Xcode project properly
• Generate Localizable.strings files from your Objective-C files
• Generate XIB specific strings files from each XIB that is marked for localization in Xcode (resides in en.lproj folder)
• Update your existing translations to Get Localization if they are available in your Xcode project
• Add these files to the Xcode project automatically (no need to drag’n'drop every file manually)

You can add multiple Xcode projects to Get Localization for Mac to sync them easily.

Just drag’n'drop your Xcode project to a new empty Get Localization project or choose any existing project you have access to. If you have any existing translations in your project, they are updated as well. Please note that if your project is big, it may take a moment to process all your files when uploading for the first time.

You can choose which languages to sync to your Xcode project. Just simply click “Sync” and  latest translations are updated to your app and new strings files are generated and sent to translation.

Try It Out – Download the Beta

Please note that Get Localization for Mac is an early beta version. It will be later available through Mac App Store but now during the public beta phase you can download it via the following link.

Download Get Localization for Mac BETA

Please report all the bugs or problems that you may find by creating a ticket in our support system.

But enough from me, now I’ll give the word to Plan Finland’s Lotta Kallio:

Q1. Tell us about Plan!

Plan is an international development organization promoting children’s rights.  Plan has been operating in Finland since 1998. Plan International was founded in 1937. Today, around 30,000 people in Finland support our work. Plan is the largest organization practicing child sponsorship in Finland. Plan has no religious or political affiliations. Plan International works in 69 countries and runs development programs in 50 countries. There are fundraising national offices in 22 countries. In Plan’s world, human rights are respected and children realize their full potential as members of society. In addition to development projects and child sponsorship in developing countries, we also work on a national level in Finland, focus on corporate partnerships, advocacy work and communication.

Q2. Please tell us about yourself.

My name is Lotta Kallio and I work as a Sponsorship communications coordinator here at Plan Finland. I oversee the correspondence between our Finnish sponsors and sponsored children around the world. I also coordinate our office and translation volunteer workers.

Q3. How are you using Get Localization?

I’ve found that Get Localization is a very effective way to coordinate translation work to our volunteers. Documents are mainly Plan’s reports of sponsored children’s communities, overviews, annual reports, area updates etc. and the translation languages are English and Finnish at the moment. Get Localization provides a great way for our volunteers to do work from home, it’s easy to access and user friendly. Also, the translation memory is a great feature when the documents have similarities in structure. Loading the documents is simple to and from the program.

Q4. Do you have translation tips or best practices you would like to share with other NGOs?

Our volunteers have been very pleased with this program. Because the documents are “cut” in smaller fragments, a person can translate a few lines at the time so there’s no pressure of having to translate a whole document in a certain timeframe. I’ve found that this encourages our volunteers to do more translation work than via e-mail.

We want to thank Lotta for taking the time to inform our readers about Plan and their experiences with Get Localization! It’s our pleasure to help.

To all our readers, please check out the Plan website. Maybe it could be something for you too? If you want to know about other ways the localization and translation industry is giving back to society, you can check out Translators Without Borders.

We have recently added a support for the Nokia Java SDK that is an Eclipse based IDE for Java ME development. This post covers basics on how to get started with localizing your Java ME apps for multiple languages by using the Get Localization Sync plug-in and Nokia Java SDK.

Getting Started: Install Everything

If you don’t have the latest Nokia Java SDK, you can download it from http://www.developer.nokia.com/Develop/Series_40/.

Then you need the Get Localization Sync plug-in.

• Open your Nokia Java SDK
• Choose Help -> Install new software…

Installing the plug-in

• Click ‘Add…’
• Enter a name for the repository, e.g. Get Localization
• Enter the repository location, which is http://getlocalization.sync.s3.amazonaws.com
• Click ‘Ok’
• Check ‘Get Localization Sync’ plugin
• Click ‘Next’ and follow instructions

Internationalization

If you are not aware of the concept of internalization or I18n, please refer to our earlier blog post Software Internalization for Dummies. Java ME has is one of those frameworks that are shipped without a standard internalization framework. Fortunately Nokia provides internalization support within their SDK and it’s easy to set up.

When you create a new project, you have an option to ‘Enable Localization Support’ (see screenshot below). This feature allows you to localize  your application strings easily.

Screenshot #1

TIP: If you already have a project and/or an existing app, you can enable the localization support by right-clicking your project and selecting ‘Mobile Tools for Java’  ⇒ ‘Enable Localization’.

So now you have everything set up, let’s see what the SDK created for us:

Screenshot #2

As you can see, there’s now two new files inside the package that we defined in the previous step.

L10nConstants.java - This is a generated Java file and will contain all the metadata of your localization data.

L10nResources.java - This is a utility class for loading the strings inside your UI.

Then we got the new editor called Localization Data. This editor is used to manage all your application strings. First you need to add your first ‘locale’ i.e. the language your application will be translated from. We recommend writing the initial version in English, as it’s easier to find translators to translate from English than other languages. Click the ‘Add locale’ button and it will add automatically en-US language for you. Make sure to check ‘Default locale’ on for this language (you can find this option to the right). You can also modify the language and country code here if you want but it’s not necessary if your app is in English.

Next you can add your first entry. Entry is a string you are using in your application, let’s say you have a ListBox element and you are setting a title for it like this:

listBox.setTitle("My Awesome App");

Now, what you want is to add this very same text as an entry to the localization file. Click ‘Add entry’ button in Localization Data editor and define key for this entry e.g. LISTBOX_TITLE and then the value ‘My Awesome App”‘ Hit save and now a few things happened:

1. Inside the res folder you can find a file called messages_en-US.properties. This is a master file which will be translated into another languages.
2. L10nConstants.java was generated and updated.

This means that you can now modify your code to use these new classes.

First of all, you need an instance of L10nResources, for example:

L10nResources res = L10nResources.getL10nResources(null);

Given parameter is null here but you could also define language code here e.g. “en-US” or “fi-FI”. It’s good for testing purposes so you don’t have to change e.g. your emulator language. Giving null means that it will try to use the same language the device is currently using.

Now we can actually load the string from resources instead of hardcoding it:

listBox.setTitle(res.getString(L10nConstants.LISTBOX_TITLE));

That’s it. Now the text is always loaded from resource files based on the phone language.

Localization

That was easy. Now it’s time to start translating your app and for that Get Localization is the perfect companion. It is a browser based service that will help you manage the files, translate them and even let you to manage your own translators if you wish. This part assumes that you are familiar with Get Localization already. If not, then I urge you to  visit the frontpage, take a tour or if you have questions, create a support ticket to the ticketing system and someone will get back to you ASAP.

Configuring the Get Localization Sync Plug-In

First you need to configure your Get Localization Sync plugin. I hope you already installed it but if not, please refer to the section ‘Getting started: Install everything’.  Now in Package Explorer, right-click your project name e.g. MyApp in Screenshot #2 and select ‘Properties’. Then find Get Localization Sync leaf in your properties and you should see the below screen:

Screenshot #3

The following fields are used:

Username - Your Get Localization username

Password - Your Get Localization password

Project - Your Get Localization project name (same that appears in project URL e.g. http://www.getlocalization.com/example/, where example is your project). If you don’t have project, please create one first at http://www.getlocalization.com/signup/

Default Platform - Platform you are developing on. IMPORTANT: You should choose “Java Properties (UTF-8)”

Pull file filter allows you to filter which files you wish to pull to your Eclipse project. For example just pull all the .properties files, you can use filter:

.*?properties

Replace rules can be used to alter file names when they’re pulled to project. Typically it’s not necessary but you can e.g. rename language codes in files in case they happen to be wrong.

Replace rules can be imported and exported so if you manage to do proper rules, please do share them with us. We’re happy to add them to our library.

Sending files to translation

Simply right-click the file in the res folder called messages_en-US.properties, then select ‘Get Localization Sync’  ⇒ ‘Send to translation’.

Syncing translations back to project

After the files are translated, you can sync them easily back to your project. Right-click ‘res’ folder and select ‘Get Localization Sync’  ⇒ ‘Sync translations to this folder’ and that is it.

Localizing your other data

Metadata such as store description

It’s highly recommended to localize your store description and other meta data. You can add multiple files to Get Localization so it’s easiest to add the store description e.g. as a plain text file. You can do this via browser on Get Localization project (Files tab)  or via the plug-in.

Dates and times

Java ME does provide some help to localize dates and times. What you want to do is to provide them both in the same format based on user settings. These settings are already configured in the device and accessing them is easy.

Dates

You can get currently used date format using following piece of code:

String format = System.getProperty("com.nokia.mid.dateformat");

This method returns for example these values with following settings:

Gregorian calendar date in little endian format: dd-MM-yyyy

Gregorian calendar date in big endian format: yyyy/MM/dd

Gregorian calendar date in big endian format: yyyy-MM-dd

Note that the date separator can be often changed from the phone settings.

Time

In a similar way you can also get the time format the Nokia Series 40 or Asha device is configured to use.

String timeFormat = System.getProperty("com.nokia.mid.timeformat");

In this case the return values are a bit simpler:

HH:mm means 24 hours clock

hh:mm a means 12 hours clock

One thing that surprised me (positively!) was how much more knowledgeable the start-ups were about localization this year. Last year many companies hadn’t thought about localization at all, but this year that was the other way around. Most people we talked to were already doing something or seriously considering it. All services were available in English, but many were also starting out with at least languages of the nearby markets. Great to hear!

That is not only good news for localization services like ours, but also for the development companies themselves. Localization is not something you shouldn’t start doing before your application or service has been around for a couple of years. No, it’s something you can start doing from the beginning, or that you should at least take into account straight from the start, when you start producing code for your application.

By the way: If you are wondering, why the conference is called ‘Slush’, do check out this weather prognosis for Finnish cities from a week ago. Not much sun there!

We met some really great people and heard of many fascinating projects at Slush 2011. One of the best things was the positive atmosphere of the whole event and determination that people showed regarding their projects. By now, many of the businesses and ideas from then have developed and grown (yes, we too ), others might have evolved into something completely different.

Looking forward to even more good stuff this year. See you there!

In case you face any problems with performance (or any other matter), please let us know by opening a ticket to our support system at http://support.getlocalization.com. Thanks!

Crowdsourced Translation And Professional Editing

Typical reasons to engage the crowd for  the translation part might be for example:

• Target language doesn’t yet have an established terminology and you want to know what kind of terminology people actually use in their everyday life when using your product.
• Your application has a large and active user base and you know they want to help you with your product.
• You want to engage your users and have them develop the product with you.

First one is good news for all Plus customers, it allows you to find more translators even when your project is private. Simply give link to your project and the users get nice invitation to join and as soon as they do that, they can fill up the application. You and your project administrators can then go through the applications conveniently and invite the promising ones to the project. Translators are kept automatically informed about their status via e-mail.

We’ve also added a setting for plus projects to limit who can add new languages to project. You can select the minimum role that is required to add new languages. This setting can be found from Settings -> Privacy & Security.

Update to Get Localization Sync for Eclipse

We’ve also released a new version of Get Localization Sync for Eclipse. You can find it from Eclipse Marketplace, just search for Get Localization and install.

This update features couple of important new features:

Pull file filter allows you to filter which files you wish to pull to your Eclipse project. For example just pull all the strings.xml’s you can use filter:

.*?strings.xml

Replace rules can be used to alter filenames when they’re pulled to Eclipse project. You can for example create rules that change the language codes or installation path. E.g. if you wish to change language code from pt-BR to pt-rBR, just create following replace rule:

pt-BR/ -> pt-rBR/

Replace rules can be imported and exported so if you manage to do proper rules for example Android or some other platform, please do share them with us. We’re happy to add them to our library.