Automated Bidirectional Languages Localization Testing for Android Apps with Rich GUI

Abstract EN

Mobile apps are everywhere.

The release of apps on a worldwide scale requires them to be made available in many languages, including bidirectional languages.

Developers and translators are usually different persons.

While automatic testing by itself is important in general in order to be able to develop high quality software, such automatic tests become absolutely essential when developers that do not possess enough knowledge about right-to-left languages need to maintain code that is written for bidirectional languages.

A few bidirectional localization tests of mobile applications exist.

However, their functionality is limited since they only cover translations and adoption of locales.

In this paper we present our approach for automating the bidirectional localization testing for Android applications with a complete consideration for BiDi-languages issues.

The objective is to check for any localization defects in the product.

The proposed methods are used to test issues of bidirectional apps in general and specifically for the Arabic language.

The results show that the methods are able to effectively reveal deficiencies in the app’s design, ensure that the localized app matches all expectations of local users, and guarantee that the product is culturally congruent to local conventions.