Question about translation files

[rdiez]

A few weeks ago I installed this app on a Spanish Android, via F-Droid, and there was no translation (everything was in English). I have checked, and there is Spanish translation file. At least one string is wrong (hasn't been translated and is actually in German).

In case I do not remember well what happened (it wasn't my phone), I wanted to have a closer look, especially because the Spanish translation file has been updated some months ago, after the last release.

I tried comparing these translation files:

app/src/main/res/values/strings.xml
app/src/main/res/values-de/strings.xml
app/src/main/res/values-es/strings.xml

The files differ more than I expected. For example, the English one (which I guess it is the main one) has a comments like and , where the German one has and . If the main file has changed, I would expect the comments (which are everywhere still in English) in the other files to change too (as an English developer can still update the English comments).

More importantly, the order of the strings is different, making a comparison difficult.

The English file has strings like "navigation_drawer_open" which does not appear in the German, Spanish or French translations. But I guess that is to be expected.

The XML header is different too. The English one has:

The German and Spanish one have no tools:locale="de" or tools:locale="es". Is such a locale definition unnecessary in the translation files?

Say I want to update the Spanish translation. Should I reorder all the strings and rename all English comments to match the main English file?

Would such a pull request have any chance? I saw issue #127, and I wonder about the development status of this project.

I do not know anything about Android App development. Is there a tool which can say which strings are missing? Can I run such a tool on a standard Linux box, or do I need to learn too much about Android development?