Translation

Rails Guide: Rails Internationalization (I18n) API

Every String (snippet of text) in the Madek Webapp is not embedded in the source code directly. Instead, they are all collected in a "YAML" file under a certain key, which is used to reference that string from the source code.

There can be one of those files per language, enabling translation of Madek into different languages.
The default language is German (de), the file can be seen here: https://github.com/Madek/madek-webapp/blob/master/locale/de.yml
Other languages: English (en)

Tip: It is possible to search for a specific key on github to see where it is used in the source code.
Ex.: https://github.com/Madek/madek-webapp/search?utf8=✓&q=sitemap_my_archive

Translator Guidelines

• Format: the_key: "The text"
• The key may only consist of lowercase letters underscores (optionally a number at the end)
• After the key comes a colon and a space (:)
• The Text is enclosed between programmer's double quotes ("), and contain anything except line breaks and those same quotes. Note: " rarely appears in product copy anyhow since typographically correct quotes should be used for each language.

Start a new translation by copying de.yml or en.yml to a new file.
Examples: fr.yml for French; de-ch.yml for Swiss German

Recommended Editor: Atom

• has support for YAML out of the box
• even better when "Indent Guides" and "Show Invisibles" is set to true in "Atom > Settings"

Usage in source code

Ruby:

I18n.locale = 'de'
string = t(:the_key_name)
string = I18n.t(:the_key_name) # when the short helper is not available

JavaScript/CoffeeScript:

t = require('app/assets/lib/string-translation.coffee')('de')
string = t('the_key_name')

Rules for developers

Reasoning: keep it simple and consistent to make search and replace more easy later.

• Ruby: Always use symbols for keys.
• Ruby/JS: Never build a key dynamically (for example by defining a 'base key' and then appending some specific name at the end inside a map).

# BAD:
section = 'foo'
[{ id: 'bar', n: 1}, { id: 'baz', n: 2}].map do |id, n|
  puts t("#{section}_#{id}") + ': ' n
end
# GOOD:
[{ title: t(:foo_bar), n: 1}, { title: t(:foo_baz), n: 2}].map do |title, n|
  puts title + ': ' n
end