Integrate PhraseApp Into Your IOS Translation Workflow

In the past, we made good experiences with PhraseApp for our Symfony2 app (see this post). So we decided to try it for iOS development. As it turned out it works like a charm with iOS Localizable Strings as well.

Our Workflow

1. Engineers add new translations keys to the code
   
   NSLocalizedString(@"ACMELoginButton", @"Login button title")

   1	NSLocalizedString(@"ACMELoginButton", @"Login button title")

   
   We run a script that uses to generate the strings from the source code
2. We push the new strings as Base locale to PhraseApp
3. The translators get notified about the new strings and can translate them in the PhraseApp backend
4. We pull the translated strings from PhraseApp and all new translation keys are translated

Step-By-Step Tutorial

1. Sign up at PhraseApp, create your project and remember your auth token
2. Install the phrase gem
   
   gem install phrase

   1	gem install phrase

   
   Go to your project dir and init phrase
   
   <span style="font-size: 12.8px; line-height: 1.5;">phrase init --secret=YOUR_AUTH_CODE</span>

   1	<span style="font-size: 12.8px; line-height: 1.5;">phrase init --secret=YOUR_AUTH_CODE</span>

3. Push your existing Localizable.strings files to PhraseApp to automatically create the languages
4. phrase push Resources/Localizations/Base.lproj/Localizable.strings phrase push Resources/Localizations/en.lproj/Localizable.strings phrase push Resources/Localizations/de.lproj/Localizable.strings

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   phrase push Resources/Localizations/Base.lproj/Localizable.strings phrase push Resources/Localizations/en.lproj/Localizable.strings phrase push Resources/Localizations/de.lproj/Localizable.strings

5. Create a small script (e.g. Resources/Scripts/UpdateTranslations.sh) that generates strings for your new translation keys from source, pushes them to PhraseApp and pulls back the translated strings
   
   #!/bin/sh localizationsPath="Resources/Localizations/" find ./ -name "*.m" -print0 | xargs -0 genstrings -o ${localizationsPath}Base.lproj phrase push ${localizationsPath}Base.lproj/Localizable.strings phrase pull --target=${localizationsPath} --format=strings

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7

   #!/bin/sh localizationsPath="Resources/Localizations/" find ./ -name "*.m" -print0 | xargs -0 genstrings -o ${localizationsPath}Base.lproj   phrase push ${localizationsPath}Base.lproj/Localizable.strings   phrase pull --target=${localizationsPath} --format=strings

6. Set the script to be executable
   
   chmod +x Resources/Scripts/UpdateTranslations.sh

   1	chmod +x Resources/Scripts/UpdateTranslations.sh

   
   Whenever you want to update your translation keys, run the script
7. ./Resources/Scripts/UpdateTranslations.sh

   1	./Resources/Scripts/UpdateTranslations.sh

   
   Done.

Also published on Medium.