Question

Is this true? When you instantiate a UIAlertButton, you have to pass it an explicit title for the Cancel button, like so:

UIAlertView *av = 
    [[UIAlertView alloc] 
         initWithTitle:@"Error" 
         message:err.localizedDescription 
         delegate:nil 
         cancelButtonTitle:@"Cancel" 
         otherButtonTitles:nil];

That means that if you want a localized app (which of course you do), you have to localize the Cancel string too, even though Apple has obviously got a canonical translation already. Am I really forced to write something like this to handle it (or is this even OK)?

NSBundle* uikitBundle = [NSBundle bundleForClass:[UIButton class]];
UIAlertView *av = 
    [[UIAlertView alloc] 
         initWithTitle:NSLocalizedString(@"Error", @"Title for Alert box when error occurs") 
         message:err.localizedDescription 
         delegate:nil 
         cancelButtonTitle:NSLocalizedStringFromTableInBundle(@"Cancel", @"Localizable", uikitBundle, nil) 
         otherButtonTitles:nil];

This looks horrible to me, but the idea that I have to maintain my own translations of words mandated by Apple’s HIG (like “Cancel” or “OK”) seems equally absurd.

Answer 1

As you expect, that’s not recommended as your code introduces an undocumented, unsupported dependency which could break your app if a future iOS update comes along that changes how Apple localizes their UIButton (not very likely, but who knows).

Really, “OK” and “Cancel” are not difficult things to translate. If you don’t wish a translator to re-localize these for you as part of your app’s localization work then you could retrieve these yourself from iOS (using your code) and copy the translation to your .strings file, so that you’ll have a reliable copy of the translation from now on!