How to prevent my strings from being translated to other languages than English?

Question

I am trying to prevent my app from automatically being translated to other languages (such as Bulgarian in my case). I want all of my strings to be in English. I tried setting the timezone to "Europe\London" (because I am in the UK) but that did not quite work. Is there a way how I can ensure that my app's settings (all of them) are not being translated when somebody install my app in other than the UK country?

I am using dates in my app and I am using SimpleDateFormatter. I think this is causing the issue of translating some of the strings. So what I did is set the timezone to it as well before using the strings from it like that:

public static SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss");
sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("Europe/London"));
String time = sdf.format(new Date());
mPurchasedDate.setText(day + " " + numDay + " " + mont + " at " + time);

But that did not work either.

PS: I have not added any localization in my app. I have only one strings.xml folder and the strings there are in English.

Can you provide some output where you decribe what you currently get and what you expect? — user0815, Apr 10 '16 at 10:10
FYI, you are using terrible date-time classes that were supplanted years ago by the modern *java.time* classes defined in JSR 310. — Basil Bourque, Dec 23 '20 at 07:22

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 10 '16 at 10:10

5

If you only want to use a specific Locale for SimpleDateFormat, use the constructor that takes a Locale: new SimpleDateFormat(String, Locale):

public static SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss", Locale.UK);

answered Apr 10 '16 at 10:10

ianhanniballake

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Thank you very much, Ian. I will test that but from the look of it I should do the trick. Thanks! :) – Georgi Koemdzhiev Apr 10 '16 at 10:13

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 22 '20 at 12:41

The date-time API of java.util and their formatting API, SimpleDateFormat are outdated and error-prone. It is recommended to stop using them completely and switch to the modern date-time API. For any reason, if you have to stick to Java 6 or Java 7, you can use ThreeTen-Backport which backports most of the java.time functionality to Java 6 & 7. If you are working for an Android project and your Android API level is still not compliant with Java-8, check Java 8+ APIs available through desugaring and How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project.

In order to stick to English, you need to specify Locale.ENGLISH with the date-time formatting/parsing API. Anyway, one of the best practices is to use Locale with the formatting/parsing API in every case.

Modern API:

DateTimeFormatter dtf = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("HH:mm:ss", Locale.ENGLISH);

Legacy API:

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss", Locale.ENGLISH);

Note that the java.util.Date object is not a real date-time object like the modern date-time types; rather, it represents the milliseconds from the Epoch of January 1, 1970. When you print an object of java.util.Date, its toString method returns the date-time calculated from this milliseconds value. Since java.util.Date does not have timezone information, it applies the timezone of your JVM and displays the same. If you need to print the date-time in a different timezone, you will need to set the timezone to SimpleDateFomrat and obtain the formatted string from it.

In contrast, modern date-time API has specific classes representing just date, or time or date-time. And, for each of these, there are separate classes for with/without timezone information. Check out the following table for an overview of modern date-time types:

A quick demo:

import java.time.LocalTime;
import java.time.ZoneId;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;
import java.util.Locale;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        LocalTime time = LocalTime.now(ZoneId.of("Europe/London"));

        // Print its default format i.e. the value returned by time#toString
        System.out.println(time);

        // Custom format
        DateTimeFormatter dtf = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("hh:mm:ss", Locale.ENGLISH);
        System.out.println(time.format(dtf));
    }
}

Output:

12:39:07.627763
12:39:07

Learn more about the modern date-time API from Trail: Date Time.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 10 '16 at 10:08

1

set translatable to false in strings.xml for every string which u want not to be translated into any other language

    <string name="account_setup_imap" translatable="false">IMAP</string>

answered Apr 10 '16 at 10:08

Manish Menaria

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How to prevent my strings from being translated to other languages than English?

3 Answers3