i18n

[kueda]

Already done

• [x] audit strings for translatability
• [x] make a decision about RTL support in MVP (we're doing it)
• [x] automate organization of strings.ftl in alphabetical order by key while preserving comments (this might require abandoning section (##) comments)
• [x] check for unused i18n keys
• [x] check for untranslatable i18n keys in use
• [x] Explore integrated translation? Talked to Crowdin support and while they support this for the web, they don't have React Native support or any plans for it

Standalone

• [ ] https://github.com/inaturalist/iNaturalistReactNative/issues/2101
• [ ] https://github.com/inaturalist/iNaturalistReactNative/issues/2100

Pre-reqs for remaining

• [x] https://github.com/inaturalist/iNaturalistReactNative/issues/2102
• [x] https://github.com/inaturalist/iNaturalistReactNative/issues/2103
• [x] https://github.com/inaturalist/iNaturalistReactNative/issues/2104

Post-reqs

Then we can do things like these (will make issues when the above are done and these are ready for work):

• [ ] Restore language chooser in the app
• [ ] Ensure system locale is respected when signed out, populated on account creation, but that account locale is used after sign in (e.g. if my phone is showing Spanish but I sign into an account set to Russian, I should see Russian in the app); keep in mind iOS locale names don't entirely match iNat locale names
• [ ] Support RTL: https://github.com/inaturalist/iNaturalistReactNative/issues/2099
• [ ] Explore translation over the wire, maybe just for a day
• [ ] Audit variable text sizes, e.g. long German words
• [ ] Audit API content; request need to be authenticated or include the locale param to get localized responses
• [ ] Localize app store description and release notes; figure out how to use fastlane to do this
• [ ] #2218
• [ ] globalize app store description

[kueda]

I'm not going to finish this iteration. So far I've done things to get strings ready for translation, and that's taken ~4 work days. Some slowdowns have been checks to ensure all strings are being used and all keys in use are translatable, working through a bug with custom Fluent functions in selectors, and just cleaning up all the existing translations so they make sense and have context (work that will probably never be done). Some of this work has been merged into main already, and the remaining audit stuff probably could be.

The actual Crowdin upload and download work still needs to happen. My plan is to try https://github.com/crowdin/github-action much like we're doing in the Android app, but to try and rely on its pull request functionality, which I suspect is better than the hack job I did on that front in Android.

[kueda]

Note that on the meeting of 2024-04-16 there was consensus that RTL does not need to be supported for the Soft Launch / MVP.