Open Source Android Translation Editor v1.0.0

Introduction

The Android Translation Editor for short "ATE" is an open source
software that allows users to easily translate native Android application resource files.

The main goal of this editor is to close the gap between app developers and their voluntary translators and this for FREE and without any limitations!

App developers like to provide their apps in as many languages as possible but usually they only speak their mother tongue and possibly another foreign language.
There are users who are willing to volunteer help with the translations to improve their own experience and increase the reach of the entire project.

To provide an easy, standalone solution for this problem we have developed ATE.
It is an easy to use editor which can be used by everyone - even by users who do not know anything about XML, as the application takes care of aspects like escaping special characters or insert not yet translated strings to existing resource files.

 

Features

• Load multiple native Android application resource files
• Create empty translation file from a template
• Edit translations in a table
• Automatically escape special characters like ' or \

 

GUI

Main window, without any files added.

Main window, with example resource files loaded.
(Notice that » app_name « is flagged as not translatable in this case)

Android XML string resource files

XML resource file from example above.

The structure of native Android string resource files is quite simple.
Each string (XML node string) gets an unique identifier (XML attribute name) which is used to access a string from code.
The content itself is located inside the XML tag. Here are some aspects the application has to take care of, for example the application will escape special characters like quotation marks or backslashes, otherwise the XML file could get corrupted if the user types those characters.

The translated XML files are usually stored under the same name (strings.xml), but in different directories with language codes as qualifiers added to their names. So in our example we could find something like the following internal structure:

• values
  • strings.xml
• values-de
  • strings.xml
• values-fr
  • strings.xml

(Notice that we renamed the source files in our example screenshot to be better able to see the differences between them.)

Most important functions

With the knowledge how a native Android string resource file is structured
two functions are created.

The read function is able to extract all necessary information from these files.

The write function is able to write changes, made in the datatable, directly into the the file. If an entry is already in this file only the value will be changed. If not a new entry is created.

Upcoming features

• Searchbar for filtering items
• Customizable layout

GitHub commits

The source code of the whole project can be found in the ATE GitHub repository and is licensed under the MIT License.

Android Translation Editor

Download

Download the source code or the compiled .exe file here

Support

Found a bug?
Need help?
Feel free to contact me on Steemit, Discord or open an issue on GitHub.