One of the nice things about Apple’s App Store for iOS devices is that it’s available in every country that has the iPhone. One of the unfortunate things is that the people in most of those countries don’t speak English as a first language and I, as a typical Englishman, know no other languages.

Then I heard about GetLocalization (whose name needs localising!), a site which allows you to “crowd-source” translations. I honestly don’t know if it will work but I thought it was a good idea and something worth trying and supporting.

To that end I have uploaded the text used in www.cut and added the languages that I think there would be the most benefit in having. I would be happy if people added others, especially if the suggestion came with some translations!

My guess is that I will need to change some of the text in the application itself. For example, one block looks like this: “%1$i character%2$@ remaining.” When viewed on the iPhone looks like either “100 characters remaining” or “1 character remaining” but I’m sure that form of pluralisation doesn’t work in most languages. Changing it is not a problem but I will need suggestions as to what the “generic” version should be. Or do I need two versions, one for singular and one for plural?

So far I have only added www.cut and I’m classifying it as an experiment, though if it works well I will likely use the same method for Yummy.

Thanks for your help.