With the upcoming release of the HTC Desire and the HTC Legend, we’ve had a lot of questions about language and keyboard settings for Android, particularly Chinese. With the ever expanding Android marketplace, there’s always an App available for to suit any needs you may have.

For a Chinese users, there is an application called Pinyin (Google Pinyin IME) released by Google. Pinyin supports stroke input, updates the soft keyboard layout and improves suggestions. Its free to downloaded and rated 4.5/5 stars on the Marketplace.

Although there are no Google releases, there are also some good Arabic keyboards available, such as Arabic Keyboard.

Android has several built-in language options. To change the locale (language) that your Android device works in:

On your Android device, under Settings>Locale & Text>Select Locale, you can choose the Language setting you would like your device to use. On some devices (such as the HTC Hero), the only setting available is English. This can be changed very easily using an App called MoreLocale 2, which can be downloaded completely free of charge from the Android Marketplace. Simply download the App and install, launch it, and select the language you would like your device to use. (Note: to change back to English, you will need to navigate through Settings>Locale & Text>Select Locale and select English).

Currently, the locales available on Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.1 are:

• Chinese, PRC , Chinese, Taiwan 
• Czech
• Dutch, Netherlands & Belgium 
• English, Britain, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore,
• French, France, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland
• German, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein
• Italian, Italy, Switzerland
• Japanese
• Korean
• Polish
• Russian
• Spanish