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I created and maintain an open source Android app. Recently someone offered to translate my app into several other languages. At the same time, development continues on the app which can sometimes add string resources which need to be translated.

How can I ensure that the additional string resources are translated with as little pain as possible? In particular, the translator seems to have very minimal technical skills. I think that teaching him version control won't be very helpful. Also asking him to manually comb through the updated English resources for changes can be error prone.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Code-Guru
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  • teach him ctrl+f and let all untranslated strings be `"TRANSLATEME"` – ratchet freak Apr 08 '14 at 21:23
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    Did you follow Android development best practices and have all your strings in a [string resource file](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/string-resource.html)? – Philipp Apr 08 '14 at 21:37
  • possible duplicate of [How do you guys handle translation for software localization?](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/80036/how-do-you-guys-handle-translation-for-software-localization) – gnat Apr 09 '14 at 07:53

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The most low tech solution I can think of:

Use a program like Diff or Meld (or whatever you like) to view the differences between the latest version of the program and the latest fully translated version.

This makes the differences a lot clearer to see than manually checking the files, whilst not being too technically challenging.

This is assuming all the translatable text are in string rescource files and not directly in the sourcecode, just like Philipp suggests.

Rob
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