Internationalization

Word length

Words with the same meaning can have different lengths in different languages. For example, "love" in English is represented in Dutch as "liefde". When developing your app in multiple languages, it's recommended to set appropriate text areas for various languages. Because watch face design recommends center alignment, providing left and right margins of the text area are highly encouraged. Without the margins, you might not be able to deliver all the information to users when the language setting changes or the text size increases. To prevent this, Galaxy Watch supports automatic font size reduction.

Word height

The height scale of the letters may be different depending on the language as well. When you support multiple languages, please consider top and bottom margins and line spacing so that characters do not overlap in a particular language.

Directionality

Basic Rule for RTL Principles

Characters of some languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, are written from right-to-left (RTL). You must apply mirroring to the App screen layout of the watch if users choose a language that uses RTL scripts. See the Mirroring rules below.

  • Text sliding in the list

    If the text length exceeds the space restriction and/or the component supports the text sliding, then apply text sliding animation with a face-out effect.

  • Scroll bar

    Mirror the position of the Scroll bar.

  • Buttons in a list

    Mirror the positions of switches, checkboxes, and radio buttons in a list item. But, DO NOT flip the control image.

  • More options cue

    Mirror the position of the More options cue.

Basic Rule for RTL Principles

The following situations should not be mirrored even if the language is set to RTL languages (such as Arabic or Hebrew). Please familiarize yourself with the exceptions to better support the RTL language.

  • User defined sequences (ex: Widget)

  • Images

  • Numbers & Time (i.e. phone numbers, date etc.)

    • RTL should not be applied to numbers. Even if numbers are translated and rewritten as characters, it should remain as in LTR case
    • Ex> Year in Latin: “2017”, Year in Arabic: “٢٠١٧”
  • Time (i.e. Time, timer, counter etc.)

    • RTL should not be applied to time. Even if the numbers are translated and rewritten as characters, the position of HH:MM:SS should be same as LTR
    • Ex> HH:MM:SS : 14:38:53  ١٤:٣٨:٥٣
  • Horizontal scroll bar / Page indicator

    Do NOT apply mirroring to a page indicator and/or a pages’ sequence in the page indicator. However, other contents in each page should be mirrored.

  • Rotary selector, Slider, Indicators, and Picker

    RTL rules are not applied to components that have a circular structure. These screens are a metaphor of the movement of the hands of the watch. Therefore, maintain the increment/decrement directions (clockwise: Increase, counter-clockwise: decrease) for the Rotary selector, Slider, Indicators, and Picker.

  • Music player

    RTL rules do not apply to the UI layouts that replicate real objects. For example, do NOT apply RTL rules to the buttons in the Music player.