Internationalization Guidelines

For Developers

Developers working on the GUI layer must be familiar with the internationalization concepts and techniques normally used on Cocoa software development and should follow the recommendations documented in  Internationalization Programming Topics.

Localizing a Cocoa application is conceptually very easy. Localizing the first version of an application is also very easy in practice. However, when the time to localize subsequent versions comes, things get a bit more complicated. New developments are only performed in the files for a single language, so now we have some localized resources from a previous version and a somewhat different version to be localized. What has already been localized in previous versions should be automatically already localized in the new version, but this is not trivial to do. This is where some localization tools available from Apple come into play: AppleGlot and AD Viewer. AppleGlot will be used to manage the localization process, while AD Viewer may be used by translators as the editor for text strings to be translated.

Developers dealing directly with the localization process (and probably interfacing with the translators involved) must install both the AppleGlot and AD Viewer applications which are available from Apple's  Localization Tools page. They should read AppleGlot's documentation thoroughly.

Whenever possible, we will only provide Work Glossary files to translators. Those files are produced by AppleGlot and have a ".wg" extension. If the translators involved are knowledgeable and confortable enough with working in Interface Builder and AppleGlot (and if they can be trusted to do so), they may also be provided with the complete "AppleGlot Environment" corresponding to their target language. This way they are able to adjust the layout of the user-interface in conformance with the new text labels lengths. If they are only provided with the work glossary files, then the layout adjustment will have to be performed by a developer afterwards.

Since AD Viewer shows the contents of the glossary to be translated (which is an XML file) directly to the user, it may not be very pleasant to use for some translators. There are other work glossary file editing tools available on the internet that may be easier to use. Some of these are mentioned in the "References" section.

For Translators

Translators should read  Internationalization Programming Topics: Notes For Localizers as it contains basic tips for translating strings and working with the NIB files that are to be translated.

References

From the  Apple Developer Connection website:

Tools for editing work glossaries more easily than with AD Viewer:

Other: