Android Internationalization: How to Design an App at Global Scale
summary
Internationalization should be treated as architecture, not a feature, and planned from the start to avoid rework; for Android this means enabling android:supportsRtl with minSdkVersion 17, using resource files instead of hardcoded strings, adding translator comments, and allowing ~30% extra string space. The talk covers Android-specific issues (Turkish casing, Portuguese plural zero-vs-one), recommends start/end layout attributes and Android/ICU formatting APIs (NumberFormat, DateFormat) for locale-correct numbers/dates/currencies, and notes auto-mirroring since Android 7.0.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Global app intro
- 3:26Globalization vs localization
- 7:07i18n architecture
- 9:36Android i18n framework
- 12:52Designing for globalization
- 17:52Localization best practices
- 25:17Bidirectional text support
- 29:13Formatting with Android
- 36:02Testing i18n
- 38:28Key takeaways
- 45:18Q&A: Translation
- 47:08Q&A: Retrofitting
- 50:28Closing
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