Regarding Localization for Brazil and Portugal

Since both countries use the same Portugese language, Apple has provided three language selection options in XCode:

• Portugese
• Portugese (Brazil) for Brazil.
• Portugese (Portugal) for Portugal.

That’s not what I see. I see two options on the primary list:

• Portugese (pt)

• Portugese (Portugal) (pt-PT)

along with a bunch of options on the Other submenu.

What is the correct approach to add localization support for Brazil and Portugal options.

You have various options but I generally recommend that you stick with what Xcode shows on its primary list, that is,

pt

pt-PT

What language preference is supported by simple Portugese option.

There’s a fallback system in play here. Imagine your app is localised to

pt

pt-PT

pt-BR

• If the user chooses Portugese (Brazil), they’ll get

  pt-BR

  .

• If the user chooses Portugese (Portugal), they’ll get

  pt-PT

  .

• If the user chooses some other flavour of Portugese (which they can’t do in the current iPhone UI), they’ll get

  pt

  .

If you do what I recommend above (include just

pt

pt-PT

• If the user chooses Portugese (Portugal), they’ll get

  pt-PT

  .

• If the user chooses some other flavour of Portugese (which they can’t do in the current iPhone UI), they’ll get

  pt

  .

In short, Brazilian Portugese essentially becomes the default.

It’s arguable whether that’s correct—of the ‘not Brazil or Portugal’ locations, there’s a good mix of those whose background is from Portugal directly and those whose background is via Brazil—but it has the advantage of being consistent with the rest of the OS.

Finally, these subtleties don’t just affect Portugese. Modern versions of iOS ship with language variants for other languages as well, the most notable being English and Chinese.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn "The Eskimo!"
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

Here's a screenshot of my Xcode 7.3: http://imgur.com/MrDYJa0

I've already chosen to localize into Portuguese (no specified region)

On the primary list, there are still the options of both Portuguese (Brazil) (pt-BR) and Portuguese (Portugal) (pt-PT)

It seems like picking Portuguese (without any specificed region) would work for any user choice of Portuguese, but is that how it works?

In iTunes Connect, I also filled in both French and Canadian French. But in Xcode, localizing into French will suffice?

Thanks!

Hi RanLearns,

There is no such thing as Portuguese with no specified region (even though it is provided as a generic option in Xcode, because it's simply a language code), so at least one group of your users will find it to be 'wrong'. So, if your file is already translated, it is either in European, or Brasilian Portuguese.

If you are able to hire translations for both language variants, then please do so.

In addition to eskimo's great explanation up above, it's important to note that you have the freedom of being as specific as you want with language codes, and the language fallback system will pick the right language at runtime for you.

So, ideally you should have one of the following: European Portuguese and/or Brazilian Portuguese, and the identifiers for both are:

- pt-BR or pt for Brazilian Portuguese, and

- pt-PT for European Portuguese.

To answer your question about iTunes Connect localisations, nothing will prevent you from publishing the app, but my point above about being as specific as you possibly can still stands: if you can provide both a Canadian French and French localisation, that is a step above just providing a French one. 🙂

Hope this helps!