
Ask HN: Translating Android - sicelo
I would like to translate Android into my native language (Swazi). I am not referring to translating the text in a specific application. Instead, I am interested in translating the core UI&#x2F;system.<p>Additionally, I would like to improve the translation for my second language, Zulu, which exists in Android, but would do with some improvement.<p>Does anyone know how to go about doing that? Searching the web seems to only give me results related to app translation.
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lovelearning
In the Android world, translations are usually found in string resources. See
[1], for example.

AFAIK, if you want improved translations, 1) you'd need to either fork AOSP,
build a custom ROM, and your users would need to deploy that custom ROM on
their devices. or 2) convince Google to accept your changes [2].

Edit: There may be other hacky approaches I'm not aware of. You might find
something useful if you trawl the XDA forums [3].

[1]:
[https://github.com/android/platform_frameworks_base/blob/nou...](https://github.com/android/platform_frameworks_base/blob/nougat-
release/packages/SystemUI/res/values-zu/strings.xml)

[2]:
[https://source.android.com/source/contributing](https://source.android.com/source/contributing)

[3]: [https://forum.xda-developers.com/](https://forum.xda-developers.com/)

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sicelo
That GitHub link was very useful! Thanks. I will see how far this gets.

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rahimnathwani
Consider asking this question on the Android Platform mailing list.

This post seems to be relevant:
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/android-
contrib/XKqt...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/android-
contrib/XKqtfeMBMUU)

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PaulHoule
Look at the Zulu translation first to see how it is implemented.

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sicelo
I have not been able to figure it out (or any other language translation for
that matter). Or Google translates this in-house with no possibility for
outside contributions?

~~~
PaulHoule
There has to be a file somewhere that has the translations in it.

