So I am about to add some localisations to a maintained Xojo app. I used Lingua to export language files, got back a few of them, imported: No issues.
The Chinese translator ignored Lingua and sent me back an Excel file containing the string names and, besides others, their translation in one of the columns.
I see that Lingua can be scripted to add functionality, so I wonder if there might be an Excel import script already available somewhere? Or another elegant solution that is less effort than “code it yourself”?
I stopped sending Lingua files to my translators some time ago when I realized there were some encoding issues. Moreover a spreadsheet allowed me to attach screenshots or comments to specific entries that required more context.
This is how I do the import from an excel / Google spreadsheet:
Make sure the first column is the constant name
Second column should contain “Any” (unless it is for a desktop app with platform specific translations)
Third column is the default value
Fourth column is the translated value.
Copy paste the four columns into a text editor such as Notepad++ or BBEdit. You’ll get a tab separated file.
Remove all rows that contain line breaks in the default / translated values.
Save the text file and import it in Lingua.
Finally, copy-paste the missing translations from the spreadsheet into Lingua, those are the strings containing line breaks.
This process isn’t ideal of course, but it’s the most effective way I’ve found so far to avoid encoding problems.
Thanks! Luckily, I had the idea to inspect the OpenLingua with Deepl project file (was it from Beatrix?) and found an Excel import method using Einhugur’s Excel reader which worked really well after tweaking the columns to the setup I received.
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