Couldn't translate Date to spanish with Locale("es_ES")

Question

I'm trying to do a simple date format, it does work great, it's very easy, but the problem is the language. I used the locale "es_ES" to get "Miércoles" instead of "Wednesday" and sorts like that but i failed.

Here's my code:

SimpleDateFormat formato = 
    new SimpleDateFormat("EEEE d 'de' MMMM 'de' yyyy", new Locale("es_ES"));
String fecha = formato.format(new Date());

The EXPECTED value of the fecha string is:

Miércoles 4 de Abril de 2012

but i'm still getting:

Wednesday 4 de April de 2012

What am I doing wrong?

is the spanish locale available in `Locale.getAvailableLocales()` — ratchet freak, Apr 04 '12 at 20:56

score 93 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 17 '18 at 20:10

93

"es_ES" is a language + country. You must specify each part separately.

The constructors for Locale are:

Locale(String language)
Construct a locale from a language code.
Locale(String language, String country)
Construct a locale from language, country.
Locale(String language, String country, String variant)
Construct a locale from language, country, variant.

You want new Locale("es", "ES"); to get the Locale that goes with es_ES.

However, it would be better to use Locale.forLanguageTag("es-ES"), using the well-formed IETF BCP 47 language tag es-ES (with - instead of _), since that method can return a cached Locale, instead of always creating a new one.

edited Jun 17 '18 at 20:10

Andreas

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answered Apr 04 '12 at 20:56

Affe

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worked great, thank you very much, i must have looked the constructors – Ulises Layera Apr 04 '12 at 21:01
What exactly is the variant for? – Jose Serodio Nov 29 '16 at 00:32
2

@JoseSerodio There are only 5 locales using variant: `en_US_POSIX: English (United States,Computer)`, `no_NO_NY: Norwegian (Norway,Nynorsk)`, `th_TH_TH_#u-nu-thai: Thai (Thailand,TH)`, `ja_JP_JP_#u-ca-japanese: Japanese (Japan,JP)`, `ca_ES_VALENCIA: Catalan (Spain,Valencian)` – Andreas Jun 17 '18 at 20:03

Basil Bourque · Answer 2 · 2017-11-28T05:34:50.677

tl;dr

String output = 
    ZonedDateTime.now ( ZoneId.of ( "Europe/Madrid" ) )
    .format ( 
        DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate ( FormatStyle.FULL )
                         .withLocale ( new Locale ( "es" , "ES" ) ) 
    )
;

martes 12 de julio de 2016

Details

The accepted Answer by Affe is correct. You were incorrectly constructing a Locale object.

java.time

The Question and Answer both use old outmoded classes now supplanted by the java.time framework built into Java 8 and later. These classes supplant the old troublesome date-time classes such as java.util.Date. See Oracle Tutorial. Much of the java.time functionality is back-ported to Java 6 & 7 in ThreeTen-Backport and further adapted to Android in ThreeTenABP.

These classes include the DateTimeFormatter to control the format of text when generating a String from your date-time value. You can specify an explicit formatting pattern. But why bother? Let the class automatically localize the format to the human language and cultural norms of a specific Locale.

For example, get the current moment in Madrid regional time zone.

ZoneId zoneId = ZoneId.of( "Europe/Madrid" );
ZonedDateTime zdt = ZonedDateTime.now( zoneId );
// example: 2016-07-12T01:43:09.231+02:00[Europe/Madrid]

Instantiate a formatter to generate a String to represent that date-time value. Specify the length of the text via FormatStyle (full, long, medium, short).

DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate ( FormatStyle.FULL );

Apply a Locale to substitute for the JVM’s current default Locale assigned to the formatter.

Locale locale = new Locale ( "es" , "ES" );
formatter = formatter.withLocale ( locale );

Use the formatter to generate a String object.

String output = zdt.format ( formatter );
// example: martes 12 de julio de 2016

Dump to console.

System.out.println ( "zdt: " + zdt + " with locale: " + locale + " | output: " + output );

zdt: 2016-07-12T01:43:09.231+02:00[Europe/Madrid] with locale: es_ES | output: martes 12 de julio de 2016

@AndrewLalis It's 2020, with 4K, 5K, 6K screens. We no longer need to code like it’s 1978, crammed on an [80-character terminal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT100). — Basil Bourque, Jul 22 '20 at 06:16
@BasilBourque I can't reach my pocket to put my mobile with a 4k screen from 2020 xD — Dan A.S., Dec 02 '20 at 11:09

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 24 '16 at 22:27

4

Java 8

LocalDate today = LocalDate.now();
String day = today.getDayOfWeek().getDisplayName(TextStyle.FULL, new Locale("es","ES")));

Also works for month.

answered Aug 24 '16 at 22:27

imTachu

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score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 12 '19 at 14:45

3

Locale spanishLocale=new Locale("es", "ES");
    String dateInSpanish=localDate.format(DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("EEEE, dd MMMM, yyyy",spanishLocale));
    System.out.println("'2016-01-01' in Spanish: "+dateInSpanish);

answered Nov 12 '19 at 14:45

abhinavsinghvirsen

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It doesn’t give the output asked for. Anyway upvoted for the demonstration of the use of java.time, the modern Java date and time API (as the third answer doing that). – Ole V.V. Nov 12 '19 at 18:25

Cristian Guaman · Answer 5 · 2016-08-17T03:10:37.140

2

    Locale esLocale = new Locale("es", "ES");//para trabajar en español
    SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat(strFormatoEntrada, esLocale);//El formato con que llega mi strFecha más el lenguaje

edited Aug 17 '16 at 03:10

answered Aug 17 '16 at 03:03

Cristian Guaman

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Couldn't translate Date to spanish with Locale("es_ES")

5 Answers5

tl;dr

Details

java.time

Java 8

Linked

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