Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Last, the logo remains in English. Localization of resource files is planned for a future
SpriteBuilder update, but there's no estimated time of arrival for that at the time of this
writing. You have to localize any audio (speech) and image files using the regular iOS app
internationalization techniques for now.
Localization Considerations
If you want to properly localize your app, you have to consider the following problem
areas:
String length
Some languages are more verbose than others. That doesn't
mean that the verbose language doesn't have a very short word for a rather
long word in the original language.
Foreign characters
These require proper string handling. All strings should
be Unicode and properly encoded. A user will want to save documents using
all language characters, and your app should allow it and not crash when the
name of a file contains an umlaut, acute or grave character—let alone Arabi-
an, Russian, or Asian characters.
Date, time, and number formats
These may be different. For instance, in
the USA the value 1,001 is a thousand and one, but for us Germans it's just
barely more than 1. Also, consider that we format our dates with the least
significant number first: 16/12/14 is the sixteenth of December in the year
2014. For you, this date may not make any sense. For us Germans, the
slashes are unusual date separators; we use dots.
Localization
This must not affect your app's storage format, such as save-
games. A common problem is saving a number like 1,234 to a file on a
device with an English locale. With the locale changed to German, the app is
relaunched and reads the value back as 1.234 or raises a runtime error be-
cause the app doesn't (correctly) interpret the dot.
Currency
The currency may be different for the language you switch to. It
could be USD, Euros, Pound, Yen—you name it.
Units of measure
These also may be different. How many elbows is a yard,
anyway? How many inches are in a yard, and do I really need to know? In
Europe and other countries, lengths are measured in meters and centimeters.
Who knows, maybe some country even measures weight in potatoes and
toes. And the German shoe sizes for typical adults are mostly in the range of
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