Is there an option to implicitly localise labels in Interfacebuilder

Question

Somewhere in a blog post I stumbled upon a strings file which looked like this:

// de.lproj/Localizable.strings
"This is the title" = "Das ist der Titel"

To me this looked like the actual labels in Interface builder were processed by the compiler so that no explicit translations using NSLocalizedString(@"SOME_IDENTIFIER", @""); would be necessary any more.

My question now, is whether there is some kind of shortcut or do I need to localise all my individual labels on my view e.g. in the awakeFromNib method.

Apple has documentation: [Preparing Your Nib Files for Localization](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPInternational/Articles/LocalizingInterfaces.html) — paulfi, Sep 14 '11 at 07:55

Besi · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-10T09:39:39.940

I have figured out a way to semi-automate the process so that I don't have to do this:

label1.text = NSLocalizedString(@"label1_key", @"");
label2.text = NSLocalizedString(@"label2_key", @"");
....
labeln.text = NSLocalizedString(@"labeln_key", @"");

So for all labels which should be localised I set their text to __KeyForLabelX in IB. Then in the viewWillAppear method of the viewcontroller I loop through the items on the view and set the text to the localized value:

for (UIView *view in self.view){
    if([view isMemberOfClass:[UILabel class]]){
        UILabel *l = (UILabel *)view;

        BOOL shouldTranslate = [l.text rangeOfString:@"__"].location != NSNotFound;
        NSString *key = [l.text stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"__" withString:@"TranslationPrefix"];
        if (shouldTranslate){
            l.text = NSLocalizedString(key, @"");
        }
    }
}

My .strings file then look like this:

"TranslationPrefixKeyForLabelX" = "Translation of Label X";

Update: To further adapt the mechanism you could also check for other UIViews like UIButtons, UITextFields (including prompt text) etc.

Using a similar idea I have created an automated tool that runs on awakeFromNib and autotranslates all your IB components. Check it out here: https://github.com/angelolloqui/AGi18n — Angel G. Olloqui, Mar 19 '13 at 09:33

Is there an option to implicitly localise labels in Interfacebuilder

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