Translate an Android app into Spanish

What Spanish changes in your strings

Spanish text usually runs longer than English. "Save" becomes Guardar, "Settings" becomes Configuración or Ajustes: narrow buttons, tabs and toolbar actions are where labels start to truncate.

• Inverted punctuation: questions open with ¿ and exclamations with ¡, even around a placeholder: ¿Eliminar %1$s?, ¡Listo!. Both characters are written as-is in UTF-8, with no escaping.
• Capitalisation: Spanish does not use Title Case. "Account Settings" becomes Configuración de la cuenta; days and months are lower case (lunes, enero).
• Gender: participles agree with the noun. A single "%1$s saved" string reused for a file and a photo needs guardado in one case and guardada in the other. Split it into two strings.
• Register: informal Toca para continuar or formal Toque para continuar. Informal tú is common in consumer apps in Spain; in Latin America usage varies by country and audience.

Spain or Latin America: Android reads generic Spanish from res/values-es/ and, from Android 7.0, accepts a Latin American variant in res/values-b+es+419/ (or per country, such as values-es-rMX). Vocabulary differs: ordenador / computadora, móvil / celular.

Spanish plurals: one, many, other

CLDR gives Spanish three plural categories: one, many and other. one covers 1 and other covers most numbers, including zero: 0 archivos is plural. many is used for large round numbers such as a million, where Spanish inserts "de": un millón de descargas.

A translated block therefore looks like this:

• <item quantity="one">%d archivo</item>
• <item quantity="many">%d de archivos</item>
• <item quantity="other">%d archivos</item>

If your source only has one and other, as English does, Manuce also writes the many item Spanish requires. In your code, avoid two traps: a plain string such as %d file(s), which cannot agree in Spanish, and a number concatenated to a word in Kotlin or Java. Use getQuantityString() so Android picks the right form.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

You get the same file in the same format: indentation, key order, quotes, comments, line endings, encoding and BOM are preserved; only the values change. In practice:

• string, string-array and plurals are translated; translatable="false" entries are respected;
• apostrophes and special characters are escaped the Android way: a name such as O'Brien stays O\'Brien in the Spanish value;
• every translated value is checked against the source: if %1$s, %2$d or a <b> tag goes missing or changes and the mismatch persists, the source value is kept and the report says so;
• keys, empty values, URLs, email addresses, numbers, colours, date formats and identifiers are not translated.

The report lists translated strings and those left unchanged, with the reason. Pricing counts only the words in the values, excluding keys and tags; for language files of around 2,000 words the quote appears as soon as you upload.

What Manuce does not do: build or test the app, translate text hard-coded in layouts or code, or translate your Google Play listing, which is not part of strings.xml. Nor does it provide certified (sworn) translation, should legal text inside the app require one.

Preparing the file and checking the result

Before uploading:

• mark translatable="false" on anything that must stay identical: brand name, API keys, technical channel IDs;
• use positional placeholders. "Page %1$d of %2$d" becomes Página %1$d de %2$d, but a sentence where Spanish reverses the order only works with %1$s and %2$s, not two bare %s;
• split strings reused in different contexts (gender, singular and plural);
• decide on the variant (Spain or Latin America) and the register, then check both on the free extract before paying.

After delivery:

1. place the file in res/values-es/strings.xml (or the folder for your chosen variant);
2. build, switch a device to Spanish and walk through the screens: truncated buttons, titles wrapping onto two lines, missing ¿ or ¡ in strings you add later;
3. read the report: every string left in the source language is explained;
4. make sure dates and numbers are formatted by locale (DateFormat, NumberFormat) rather than hard-coded: Spain writes 1.250,50, Mexico 1,250.50.

In practice

1. Export res/values/strings.xml and mark translatable="false" on anything that must not change.
2. Upload the file, choose Spanish and review the quote based on the words in the values.
3. Check the free extract: variant, tú or usted register, ¿ and ¡ punctuation.
4. Drop the delivered file into res/values-es/, build and walk through the app in Spanish.
5. Read the report for any strings kept in the source language.