I have seen several conflicting tables that show localizations and what names they should take
A lot of them suggest that there are versions of the language for each country, which is fine, for languages like English, Spanish and Chinese, where I can choose to make a values-en folder or a values-en_US folder if I want to make it more specific
but some other languages like greek have a locale name el_GR , can I just make a folder names values-el or does it HAVE to be values-el_GR
thats just an example and I don't trust the tables I have read, and the android developer guide does not nearly list the available locales
The folder name of Android string files is formatted as the following:
- without region variant:
values-[locale]
- with region variant:
values-[locale]-r[region]
- For example:
values-en, values-en-rGB, values-el-rGR.
In your case, you just need to create a folder values-el for the Greek translation, and values-el-rGR for the country-specific Greek translation.
Also, you can make use of the resources fallback mechanism in Android, to allow particular strings to be further translated locally.
For example, suppose you have a string called “R.string.title” and the locale is ‘el-GR’, Android will look for a value of “R.string.title” by searching the files in the following order:
res/values-el-rGR/strings.xmlres/values-el/strings.xmlres/values/strings.xml
Therefore, you can just put the country-specific translation inside the res/values-el-rGR/strings.xml, and let the res/values-el/strings.xml stores the general translations.
It can avoid duplicating your strings in different language files by utilizing this fallback mechanism.
all can find in https://developer.android.com/index.html
- in https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/providing-resources.html#AlternativeResources
the page descript multiple resouce define, like drawable , value
- in https://developer.android.com/training/basics/supporting-devices/languages.html
the page provide Language res define，
it‘s import How Create Locale Directories and Resource Files .
the format is <resource type>-b+<language code>[+<country code>].
and the language code country code reference https://developer.android.com/reference/java/util/Locale.html
language
ISO 639 alpha-2 or alpha-3 language code, or registered language subtags up to 8 alpha letters (for future enhancements). When a language has both an alpha-2 code and an alpha-3 code, the alpha-2 code must be used.
You can find a full list of valid language codes in the IANA Language Subtag Registry (search for "Type: language").
https://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry/language-subtag-registry
country (region)
ISO 3166 alpha-2 country code or UN M.49 numeric-3 area code. You can find a full list of valid country and region codes in the IANA Language Subtag Registry (search for "Type: region").
https://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry/language-subtag-registry
Other reference： https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2
Right click "res" folder in your project. Pick > New > Android resource file > Localization - and it will offer you all the possible Language and Locales options and even create required folders.
