App Localization — iOS

Bundle Localizations

The first step in localizing an app is determining which languages you wish to support. Once this is determined:

1. Locate the appropriate 2-character ISO 639-1 language code for each.

2. In the project build.settings file, add these language codes to a CFBundleLocalizations table within the settings → iphone → plist table. The order is not important, but make sure that each entry is the 2-character string value appropriate to the language, for example:

settings =
{
    iphone =
    {
        plist =
        {
            CFBundleLocalizations =
            {
                "en",  --English
                "es",  --Spanish
                "it",  --Italian
                "de",  --German
                "fr",  --French
                "ja",  --Japanese
                "ko",  --Korean
            },
        },
    },
}

3. Add the CFBundleDisplayName and CFBundleName keys as the app defaults (see Project Build Settings for details). Note that these should reside inside the plist table but outside the CFBundleLocalizations table.

settings =
{
    iphone =
    {
        plist =
        {
            CFBundleLocalizations =
            {
                "en",  --English
                "es",  --Spanish
                "it",  --Italian
                "de",  --German
                "fr",  --French
                "ja",  --Japanese
                "ko",  --Korean
            },
            CFBundleDisplayName = "Princess",
            CFBundleName = "Princess",
        },
    },
}

Localized Project Folders

The second step involves creating a localized project folder for each language in the root project directory alongside main.lua.

1. For each language that you specified in the CFBundleLocalizations table within build.settings, create a new xx.lproj folder in the app’s root directory, where xx represents the 2-character language code.

2. Within each of these localized project folders, create a new text file titled InfoPlist.strings:

3. As the contents for each InfoPlist.strings file, specify both a CFBundleDisplayName and CFBundleName line with the proper title for that language, for example:

CFBundleDisplayName = "Princess";
CFBundleName = "Princess";

CFBundleDisplayName = "La princesa";
CFBundleName = "La princesa";

CFBundleDisplayName = "공주 패션쇼";
CFBundleName = "공주 패션쇼";

Language Testing

Once the above steps are complete, you can test the bundle names locally to ensure that the localized names appear.

1. Build the app as outlined in the Build Process section of the Provisioning and Building guide.

2. Install the app as described under Device Installation in the Provisioning and Building guide.

3. Change the device language setting via Settings → General → Language & Region and choose one of the languages within your localization setup. If you configured everything as outlined, the app name should appear as the name you defined for CFBundleDisplayName in the respective InfoPlist.strings file.