Translate an iOS app into Spanish

What changes when your UI goes Spanish

Spanish uses the Latin alphabet, left to right: no mirrored layout, no special font, and á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ and ü are covered by the system fonts. The real issues lie elsewhere.

• Length. Spanish runs longer than English. Sign in becomes Iniciar sesión, Share becomes Compartir: a tab bar item or navigation title sized for English may be truncated.
• Opening punctuation. Questions and exclamations open with ¿ or ¡: Delete this photo? becomes ¿Eliminar esta foto?. If the string starts with a placeholder, the mark still comes first: ¿Eliminar %@?.
• Register. Informal tú or formal usted: pick one and keep it throughout, including alerts and permission prompts. Consumer apps usually go with tú.
• Agreement. Participles agree with the noun: Saved becomes Guardado for a documento and Guardada for a foto. One source string reused in two places may need two keys in Spanish.

Spain or Latin America: folder, vocabulary, numbers

iOS recognises several variants: es (generic Spanish), es-419 (Latin America), es-MX and others. A device set to a variant your project lacks falls back to a more general one, then to es.

Common UI words differ: ordenador / computadora, móvil / celular, vídeo / video. A common approach is to ship one translation in es that avoids the most regional terms, and add a variant only when your market justifies it. Decide before translating, and have someone from the target country check the handful of sensitive terms.

Separators differ too: decimal comma in Spain, decimal point in Mexico. Never hard-code 1,234.56 in a string; use NumberFormatter and DateFormatter. Manuce leaves numbers and date formats untouched.

Plurals and placeholders: one, many, other

CLDR gives Spanish three plural categories: one, many and other. one covers 1 (1 archivo), other the rest (0 archivos, 5 archivos). many applies to large round numbers in compact notation, where Spanish inserts de: 1 millón de archivos. It can appear in your catalogue even though English has no such form.

In a String Catalog (.xcstrings), Spanish is added with its plural variations, each category getting its own form. A Localizable.strings file holds no plurals; if yours live in a .stringsdict, the simplest route is to migrate to a catalogue before translation.

Word order often shifts. %@'s photos becomes Fotos de %@. With two placeholders, use positional specifiers so the sentence can be reordered: %1$@ liked %2$@'s post becomes A %1$@ le gustó la publicación de %2$@. Manuce checks that %@, %d and %1$@ are all present in every translation.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

You upload a Localizable.strings (UTF-8 or UTF-16) or an .xcstrings file. You get back the same file in the same format: indentation, key order, quotes, comments, line endings, encoding and BOM preserved. Only the values change.

Each translated value is compared with the source for placeholders and tags. If a mismatch persists, say a %d dropped from Quedan %d días, the source value is kept and the report says so. The report lists translated strings and those left as they were, with the reason.

Not translated: keys, empty values, URLs, email addresses, numbers, colours, date formats, identifiers and anything marked as not translatable. The quote counts words in values only, keys and tags excluded.

Manuce does not see your screens or layout constraints, so it cannot tell whether Iniciar sesión fits your button. App Store listing text is not part of these files. Before paying, the free sample shows one paragraph at your chosen level, which is a good way to judge the register; for a published app, Professional or Premium is the sensible choice.

Preparing the file and checking in Xcode

• Comment ambiguous strings: Open may be Abrir (button) or Abierto (status).
• In a catalogue, mark what must stay as is, such as your app or brand name, with shouldTranslate: false.
• Split keys reused for nouns of different genders (Guardado / Guardada).
• Do not forget permission prompts (camera, location): they often sit in a separate file and are among the first texts a Spanish-speaking user reads.
• Once the file is back in the project, run the app in Spanish in the simulator with a large text size and check truncation, the ¿ at the start of questions, and plurals with 1, 2 and a very large number.

In practice

1. Export the Localizable.strings or .xcstrings file from your project.
2. Upload it: the quote appears, based on words in values, and the free sample shows the register used.
3. Choose a level and pay; a typical file is translated within minutes.
4. Put the file back in the project (es.lproj folder or catalogue) and read the report.
5. Test the app in Spanish in the simulator with a large text size.