android localized String resource with non-translatable word inside

Question

Lets make string resource:

<string name="pin_code_title">Please enter PIN code</string>

or

<string name="enter_btc_tokens_amount">Enter amount of BTC tokens you want to send</string>

I use google translation service where I upload strings.xml to translate it automatically. And I want google to keep "PIN" and "BTC" [and some other brand names] untranslatable. And this is my problem. Google translates the whole string if it can.

I have checked android string resources docs

Solutions I see and still don't like:

1. To declare parameters: <string name="pin_code_title">Please enter %s</string> or <string name="enter_btc_tokens_amount">Enter amount of %s you want to send</string> and then call textView.text=... from Kotlin. -I don't like it because I use string resources in layouts.

2. To use "Entities in XML" described here. I see comment "xml entities are not supported by translation services" comments and I hope that google translates xml files but keeps Entity untranslated.

What is the best practice to keep some words untranslated inside translatable string ?

Answer 1

I recommend LikeTheSalad gradle plugin.

We use it in production for a while without any issues.

An easy and intuitive way to use resource A as nested resource inside resource B.

I tweaked the example of the repo description for you purpose:

<resources>
    <string name="pin" translatable="false">PIN</string>
    <string name="pin_code_title">Please enter ${pin} code</string>
</resources>

This way, Google will translate Please enter ${pin} code (I believe they won't translate ${pin}), but in the final APK, the resource will be generated correctly: Please enter PIN code.