For Android developers: Translate your app easily the same way Floating Apps is translated

This post is about Localazy – a translation platform with unique features for Android developers. We initially developed it for Floating Apps and you can use it for your Android apps too. Localazy is also great for all users of Floating Apps as it helps me to improve translations, bring it to more languages and focus on the further development of Floating Apps. 

Over the last few years, I was struggling with translating Floating Apps. It’s a tedious task and a headache for me. Uploading strings, translating them, verifying translations, putting them back to the app, and publishing a new version of Floating Apps. I don’t even mention doing changes to the source code and resources to be able to use some existing translation platform to manage translations and contributors.

Some of you were here to help me with translating the app, thanks for all your help! Btw, you can help with translating Floating Apps here: Floating Apps on Localazy. Thanks for considering it ;).

But some people destroyed the contribution of others. I don’t know why but they purposely changed existing translations. It puts a lot of additional work to my shoulders as I always want to be sure that translations are as good as they can be even if I don’t understand the given language.

Also, I hated to publish a new version of Floating Apps without being completely translated, but it wasn’t always possible to finish all translations. The time is ticking too fast…

So, I was looking for a solution – a translation platform with:

• easy way how to upload strings – I often delayed new versions because I hated to upload strings every single day after I did changes, and this led to extra time being required by contributors to complete translations. 
• support for product flavors and libraries – There was no translation platform to understand my project structure and being able to translate also libraries and product flavors. Many different versions of Floating Apps – full, free, auto, for Google Play, Amazon, Huawei, Standalone, etc. are generated from the single code base using product flavors, and it’s not easy to translate them without changes to the source code and resources. 
• real OTA (over the air) updates of translations – Some translation platforms offer libraries for OTA updates. Still, they are far from being reliable and not able to translate the app entirely. And you don’t want to spend days or weeks to manually tweaking all places the library is not able to translate on-the-fly. And none of them support product flavors, libraries, and app modules. 
• review process suitable for me being a single developer – I wanted to ensure high-quality translations, and I developed my own tools for other translation platforms, but it was slow and unfriendly. And I wanted to instead invest my time in making Floating Apps better and not going through command-line tools to check translations. Doing it other way, on the platform itself, was even slower.
• sharing the work with other users – I don’t mind to share my translations to improve other apps while receiving translations from other apps to improve Floating Apps. In the end, all users of those apps are going to benefit and we, developers, are doing it for users! 
• affordable pricing reflecting the growth of the app – I spent a lot of money on translating Floating Apps because it’s what helps users to enjoy the app. However, paying a business program to get all features was sometimes out of my budget as Floating Apps is still rather a hobby project.
• optimizations of the translation process – Not only that other platforms don’t understand your app’s structure, but they also don’t know what strings are important. Often, strings that were almost never used were translated, while more important ones were left untranslated.

Experimenting with many existing solutions and being unable to find a suitable one, I’ve decided to create it. It’s called Localazy (https://localazy.com), and you can use it to translate your Android app too. 

• You integrate it by adding a few lines to your Gradle script.
• It can understand your project structure, product flavors, app modules, libraries, etc. 
• It automatically integrates its library to your app, and you don’t need to touch your source code.
• OTA updates can translate all parts of your app, including menus, preferences, popups, etc. It supports AndroidX and even old Support libraries too. 
• The library also provides many useful features for you.
• You can upload your strings to the Localazy platform by a single click in the Android Studio or through Gradle. 
• As soon as you upload your strings, you start sharing your translations with other app and can get as much as half of your app translated to 80 languages for no costs.
• With complete peace of mind, you can focus on developing your app and, from time to time, review new translations and changes. You never get lost in your translations again. 
• OTA updates collect anonymous stats and optimize the translation process, so the most important strings are always translated first, bringing more value to your users. 
• And with cloud-based pricing, you only pay for what you really use. Free tier for small apps is available! 

If you want to try Localazy, don’t hesitate to contact me at info@localazy.com! I will gladly help you and hear your comments and suggestions. I always listen to users of Floating Apps. Localazy is my second baby and as with Floating Apps, I want it to be great! Be part of it!

Btw, we are working on support for other platforms (iOS, hybrid apps) as well as many other features. So if your app is for more platforms, Localazy will soon be an option for you too ;). Go for Android now to give it a try!