Localizing Your Application

In the early days of personal computers, most software and manuals were written in English. At the time, I lived in France, and I remember my French friends asking me to translate sentences and commands. Had the software been using hieroglyphics, the result would have been no different. They had a marked preference for French software, even when it was less powerful. Times have changed: Most European children now learn English at school, and much more software is available in other languages.

Cocoa Touch provides tools to help you localize your application, but does not perform the translation for you. In this section, you’ll convert it to German and French, two of the main target markets. Spanish and Japanese are other key languages as many potential customers speak those languages. Figure 24.2 shows the completed application.