Strings in Applescript depends on the system language - are there universal names?

Question

I write some Applescripts that are gonna be deployed on machines set to different languages. I just realised that when I, for example, is waiting for an application to open a window (e.g., a Save/Open dialog) my scripts fail because on systems set to other languages these windows are not called Save or Open anymore, but rather have a translated name.

How do I handle this? Do windows have "universal base name" I can look for rather than the name I Accessibility Inspector shows? And I guess there are other strings that also are translated that I might need to access (menus, menu commands and so on) - my problem is not limited to just Open/Save dialogs.

Answer 1

AppleScript supports NSLocalizedString (localized string). You need to refer to and pull out the strings from the corresponding framework bundles.

For example:

set finderPath to path to application "Finder"
(localized string "A16" in bundle finderPath)

The result is:

• in English: You can’t undo this action.
• in German: Diese Aktion kann nicht widerrufen werden.

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localized string has two optional parameters:

• from table : The name of the strings file excluding the “.strings” suffix (default is “Localizable”)
• in bundle : An alias or file reference to the bundle containing the strings file (default is the current application/script bundle)