Localizing the Cut|Copy|Paste menu on iOS

Question

Im having some issues localizing a danish app ive made. (The language, not the pastry)

I have set the CFBundleDevelopmentRegion to da_DK for danish in my info.plist,

Answer 1

You must localize your app in Danish to make the standard UI elements appear in that language. This is to avoid having a UI with mixed languages.

If you don't use xibs, you'd usually do this by adding a Localizable.strings file to your project. In Xcode's "Add File" dialog, you can use the "Strings File" template (under "Resources") for this.

To actually localize the strings file, open the file inspector (⌘ ⌥ 1) and click the + button in the "Localization" section. You'll end up with the file being displayed as a group in the project navigator, with a sub-entry for each language.

The strings file has the format:

"Label_Text" = "Smørrebrød";

(don't forget the semicolon)

To use localized strings in your code, you can use the NSLocalizedString macro like this:

myLabel.text = NSLocalizedString(@"Label_Text", nil);

(The second parameter is for a comment. This can be useful if you use the genstrings tool to extract localizable strings from your code and give the resulting file to a professional translator.)

If you use the English strings as keys, you can leave the English version of Localizable.strings empty (but don't delete it).

Having a Localizable.strings file in the language that the user has selected will also cause standard UI elements, such as the editing menu, photo picker, and so forth, to appear in that language.