Building Android Apps for a Global Audience
summary
Android reaches 900 million devices, 1.5 million activations per day and 48 billion Play installs across 190 countries, so localize beyond English (about 25% of internet users). Workflow is prepare → translate → test: extract text to strings.xml, protect parameters with xliff, use plural resources and getQuantityString for correct plural forms, and use locale-aware date/number APIs. RTL support requires adding supportsRtl, switching left/right to start/end, aapt -ldrtl and HierarchyViewer checks; Play’s translation service (pilot) produces ready-made strings.xml and Studio can wire them in, with alpha/beta testing for native feedback.
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chapters (32)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:09Android has global momentum
- 1:40Internet users by language
- 1:55What does it take?
- 2:42A strategy for language expansion
- 3:16Internationalization and Localization
- 4:39A single, flexible layout A layout that works for al locales
- 5:26What's wrong here?
- 6:24Using strings.xml
- 7:14Provide context
- 8:08XLIFF Placeholders
- 9:07Plurals are different across languages
- 9:41Plurality in Breton
- 10:00Quantity Strings
- 12:28What movie is this?
- 12:46Breakfast at Tiffany's
- 13:21Peking Duck
- 14:10RTL = right to left
- 15:38What we want: layout mirroring / text alignment
- 16:29Android Manifest.xml
- 18:22start/ end properties in API level 17
- 18:36Step 2: ... Add specific RTL resources
- 20:01Tune layouts and text
- 20:35layout Direction
- 21:39New RTL properties for View
- 22:42update code for custom views
- 24:04Compatibility for pre JB-MR1
- 25:06Tools support for RTL
- 26:56RTL tips and tricks
- 31:27New in Developer Console
- 35:33Layout Tuning
- 37:12Quality testing
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