Mining for localization in Android

Abstract

Localization, and in particular translation, is a key aspect of modern end-user software applications. Open source systems have traditionally taken advantage of distributed and volunteer collaboration to carry localization tasks. In this paper, we will analyze the Android source code repository to know how localization and translation is managed: who participates in this kind of tasks, if the translation workflows, participants and processes follow the same patterns as the rest of the development, and if the Android project takes benefit from external contributions. Our results show that Android should ease the localization tasks to benefit from external contributions. Steps towards obtaining a specialized team as found in many other free software projects are also encouraged.