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Localization

Android's string resources, reachable from markup without the stringResource ceremony.

Using a string

Reference a resource and Whitehall resolves it against the device's locale:

<Text>{R.string.welcome}</Text>
Text(text = stringResource(R.string.welcome))

With arguments

Call it to fill in format placeholders:

<Text>{R.string.greeting(userName)}</Text>
Text(text = stringResource(R.string.greeting, userName))

Where the strings live

In Android's own resource directories, which Whitehall passes through untouched. The default locale, then one directory per translation:

src/android/res/
├── values/strings.xml        # default
├── values-es/strings.xml     # Spanish
└── values-ja/strings.xml     # Japanese
<!-- values/strings.xml -->
<resources>
    <string name="welcome">Welcome</string>
    <string name="greeting">Hello, %1$s!</string>
</resources>
The lookup is Android's, not Whitehall's. Locale selection, fallback to the default when a translation is missing, and switching when the user changes their system language all behave exactly as they do in any Android app.

What is not covered

Only strings. Plurals (<plurals>), and formatting numbers, dates and currencies, have no Whitehall shorthand — reach for the platform APIs, which need a $appContext:

$appContext.resources.getQuantityString(R.plurals.items, count, count)
A literal is not an error. <Text>Welcome</Text> compiles and ships, which means untranslated strings fail silently — they just stay in English. If localization matters for your app, that is worth a lint pass or a review habit rather than trusting the compiler to catch it.

See Also