How to handle special cases in localization swift

Question

I created a Localizable.strings file and the translation works fine. But there is a special case where in english there is one word for singular and plural, like \'series\'.

Answer 1

This is exactly what the Plural Rule Properties in Stringsdict files are for.

So in addition to the "Localizable.strings" file you have to provide a "Localizable.stringsdict" property list file with plural rules for the language. In your case:

Localizable.strings:

"%ld series" = "%ld Serien";

Localizable.stringsdict:

<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>%ld series</key>
    <dict>
        <key>NSStringLocalizedFormatKey</key>
        <string>%#@series@</string>
        <key>series</key>
        <dict>
            <key>NSStringFormatSpecTypeKey</key>
            <string>NSStringPluralRuleType</string>
            <key>NSStringFormatValueTypeKey</key>
            <string>ld</string>
            <key>one</key>
            <string>%ld Serie</string>
            <key>other</key>
            <string>%ld Serien</string>
        </dict>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Note that the proper format specifier for Int (which can be a 32-bit or 64-bit integer) is %ld.

Now everything works "automatically", with no changes in the Swift code:

for n in 1...3 {
    let str = String(format: NSLocalizedString("%ld series", comment: ""), n)
    print(str)
}

Output:

1 Serie
2 Serien
3 Serien

Even if more languages with other plural rules are added, no changes in the Swift code are necessary.

Answer 2

How I do it is do my localisation names as follows: series = "series" and "Serie" and series_pural = "series" and "Serien". Then the system just looks for a _plural afterwards and if it exists then it'll show it (if you tell it that its a plural word that u are localising). Another way would just you handle whether or not a word is a plural on a case by case basis.

Answer 3

There are quite a lot of ways how is possible to do this. But i prefer to use way that is introduced by Apple it s quite easy and clear.

Use NSLocalizedString with checking of the amount in you're case.

Example :

let toast: String

if days == 1 {  
    toast = NSLocalizedString("Serie.one", comment: "")
}
else {  
    toast = String(format: NSLocalizedString("Serien.other", comment: ""), days)
}  

Localizable.strings contains this information:

Serie.one = "Serie";  
Serien.other = "Serien %d ";