Did you know that there are now 1.96 million applications available in the Apple App Store and 2.87 million in the Google Play Store?
In this day and age, almost everyone has access to the internet via a smartphone, therefore there are a plethora of people making use of mobile applications. If a website or platform has a mobile app, every user would rather utilize that app since it provides a more streamlined, efficient, and convenient experience.
However, multilingual support is necessary when developing an app to meet the needs of individuals all over the world. Some app users may appreciate being able to read your site in their native tongue. If you don’t provide the customer any options, you might expect a decline in business.
As such, we’ll show you, step-by-step, how to add support for many languages to your React Native development services app.
So, What Exactly Is a Multilingual App?
First, however, let’s define what we mean by a “multilingual app” so that we can go on to the actual implementation.
The term “multilingual application” refers to software that may be used in more than one language. The following are some of the locations where we provide language translation services:
- Selecting a language preference at signup is an optional feature.
- In the shared header, where words and phrases are interchangeable at any moment.
- In the section labeled “Preferences.”
Why Is Multilingual Setup Important?
For the sake of your users and the success of your contemporary company, you must implement a multilingual system. You can easily convert your users into buyers when you speak their language.
- Having an app that can be used in several languages increases your chances of being downloaded. It makes your information and services more accessible to users outside of your immediate area.
- Users who don’t speak or understand your language may effortlessly switch the app’s language settings, lowering your churn rate.
- When you cater to a broader demographic with your content, search engines like Google will reward you with a higher page rank.
- With multilingual help, your company’s reputation and visibility will soar.
Guide to React Native’s Multilingual Setup
The ability to build in several languages is essential when creating an app with a global reach. Let’s dive into learning more about React Native’s multilingual configuration options.
Change the default language depending on a user’s mobile device’s location. In India, for instance, a user’s preferred regional language may be selected through their phone’s settings and location in a multilingual setup like Google Translate.
Standard Language
Setting a default language and providing an option to change it afterwards is the preferred technique for multilingual setup in React Native. This support for many languages is standard in many modern programms.
All of the app’s features and instructions are shown in English upon first download. Nonetheless, you may change the default language under the app’s Settings or Profile. Though English is presented as an example because of its widespread use, you are free to choose any language you choose as your default.
Installing React Native with Multiple Languages
In this detailed tutorial, you’ll learn how to implement the second method, which will allow for support in several languages. This implies that once a user downloads the app, they will be given the choice to switch to Norwegian from the default language (read: English).
Every software has a dual approach for setting up support for many languages. To begin, we localize the app’s static text by performing a static text translation. Second, we make sure that the user’s local time and date are shown correctly.
The Translation of Static Text
To translate static text, the language of the application’s static content must be changed. This involves revising the following texts:
- Labels for Buttons in an App’s Content
- Reassuring communications
- The wording of the form’s “Call to Action” (CTA)
Static Text Translation Procedures
You may already be aware of this fact if you’ve done any development work with React Native: we often need to rely on other packages. Both i18next and react-i18next, libraries for localization and internationalization, will be used in a multilingual environment.
The popular internationalization framework I18next was developed in JavaScript. You may thoroughly localize your app or product using this suite. With the aid of React-i18next, we are able to use what are called namespaces in the i18n context to organize and save our translations in several files.
With the package manager, you may install any available React Native package or library. Yarn and NPM are two of the most popular package managers out there. You won’t have to manually install npm or Yarn if your computer already has Node.js.
The Npm package manager is our most comprehensive software library. Private development management, package borrowing, and package sharing are just some of the uses it sees regular use for among developers throughout the world.
Three Parts Make Up Npm:
- You may use this website to manage your whole npm experience, including searching for packages, making profiles, and more.
- To communicate with npm, react native developers india use the CLI.
- Metadata is stored in the Registry, which is a database.
However, many developers prefer using Yarn since it is quicker and includes additional capabilities, such as Workspace. Since Yarn stores your packets in a cache, it can process them much more quickly. This package manager minimizes setup times by making efficient use of available resources during installation.
In this guide, we’ll be using the Yarn package manager for its convenience and speed.
- Initiate the process by using the Yarn package manager to include the i18next and react-i18next libraries into your project:
- I18next support added to yarn
- Include React-i18next in Yarn
The libraries should be listed as dependents in package.json after these instructions have completed properly.
- Once you have added your packages, you need to go to App.js. The primary wrapper component, App.js, should be updated with any packages or libraries that will be used in a multilingual configuration for React Native.
When creating mobile web applications, developers often turn to App.js, a JavaScript package that helps them construct apps that look and feel like native apps yet run on any web browser. However, the application’s performance is unaffected by this.
- Provides support for iOS and Android native transitions
- Allows users to alter the site’s appearance using a variety of different themes and widgets
- Facilitated paging and view switching
Therefore, all of our mobile app’s shared code is located in App.js. Because of this, we need to include the aforementioned packages in app.js so that they are available across our application.
- Create a folder in src called translation after importing your libraries to app.js. In addition, create a folder labelled “en” for English and another labelled “de” for German (for German). we need to subsequently add two json files, which we have titled common.json in our example.
However, you are free to rename these documents as needed for your project. Each language that you want to support should have its own common.json file. These two files contain the English and German translations of the tutorial’s language-specific strings.
- Check out the English and German resource files for translators first. For easier upkeep, the strings are organized according to the pages or modules they appear on. Strings associated with the HomePage are grouped together, whereas those associated with the ProfilePage are grouped separately. The translated text should be added as a key/value pair under each heading. For example, HomePage utilizes two static text strings title and impending appointment.
After you’ve finished making your language and multilingual support resource files, you’ll need to import them into app.js so that your app can display text in many languages.
- Create a function in app.js after finishing the preceding steps, as seen in the following picture. This function sets the language to its default state.
The lng is also set to a state variable that represents the language we’re utilizing for our app’s translations, which in our instance are en and de. As a result, the language used by the app as a whole is meant to adapt to the user’s context as it evolves. The state will switch to English if it is storing the code en, and it will switch to German if it is storing the code de.
- Default language is assigned to the state variable. As before, the choice of language affects the value of this state variable.
- We need to choose where we will provide the language selection option. In the Settings or Profile menu, for instance, you may provide a toggle between two flags.
Summary
The aforementioned procedures are required for developing a multilingual app in React Native when you hire a dedicated react native developer. We’ve made two resource files, one each for English and German, but you may produce as many as you want and import them for translation.
