Target Users

This is meant for users who are looking to translate My Tracks to a new language, or update an existing translation. Those users probably also want to join the translators mailing list.

Strings files

Android puts all strings used by the application in XML files in the res/values directory - more specifically, the strings.xml and arrays.xml files. To translate it to a new language, you simply make a copy of those two files for the language, change all the strings, such as:

<string name="start_recording">Record track</string>

becomes

<string name="start_recording">Gravar trilha</string>

for Portuguese.

All strings which are not going to be translated (those marked with "DO NOT TRANSLATE") should be removed from the translated file - Android will find them in the main (English) file. Do not copy the colors.xml in the res/values directory.

Sending changes

There are basically two ways to do that, depending on your level of expertise: one of them is to send the files back to the My Tracks development team (e.g. by opening a feature request and attaching the files, or e-mailing them to the translators mailing list).

If you have some familiarity with version control systems, though, you can read our development process, then use it for making changes to files in the res subdirectory, and request a regular code review. If you're adding a new language, then your copy of the XML files will go into res/values-XX, where XX is the two-letter code for the language in question, such as "values-de" for German. If the language in question is regionalized, then the format becomes "values-XX-rYY", such as "values-pt-rBR" for Brazilian Portuguese.

References

Localization in Android