How do language translations work in the mobile SDK user interface and HelpCenterActivity?

Question

How do language translations work in the SDK user interface and HelpCenterActivity?

Answer

By default, the mobile SDK supports a defined set of languages. However, you can add your own variant or language to the SDK by creating your own string file for a specific locale. You can also overwrite the existing string in your own string.xml file to replace a particular language (iOS/Android).

When using the SDK, the whole interface locale is based on your device locale. There's no function in the SDK to change the whole interface locale.

Programmatically, it's possible to change the app locale with custom code but this will not reflect on the UI as we do not support changing the locale at runtime. The only way to change the UI elements translation is to change the device locale and restart the app.

What about the HelpCenterActivity?

When you use the setHelpCenterLocaleOverride (iOS/Android), you need to tell the help center which locale the articles should come from. This doesn't have any impact on the UI. By default, the help center refers to the device, like the rest of the app. For example, if your device locale is en-us, by default the UI, AnswerBot, and article's locale from HelpCenter will use en-us too.

If you then use setHelpCenterLocaleOverride to set the help center to fr-fr, for example, all the UI and AnswerBot interactions remain in en-us, but all the suggested articles will be offered in fr-fr.