bookorbit/docs/LOCALIZATION.md

Localization

BookOrbit uses Vue I18n catalogs under client/src/locales/. English is the source language, and Crowdin is the source of truth for every other catalog listed below.

Supported Catalogs

Application locale	Crowdin language ID	Catalog
English	Source language	en.json
Czech	cs	cs.json
Danish	da	da.json
German	de	de.json
Spanish	es-ES	es.json
Finnish	fi	fi.json
French	fr	fr.json
Italian	it	it.json
Dutch	nl	nl.json
Polish	pl	pl.json
Brazilian Portuguese	pt-BR	pt.json
Russian	ru	ru.json
Slovenian	sl	sl.json
Swedish	sv-SE	sv.json
Ukrainian	uk	uk.json
Simplified Chinese	zh-CN	zh.json

Crowdin's %two_letters_code% placeholder reduces the regional IDs above to BookOrbit's application locale and filename: es-ES to es, pt-BR to pt, sv-SE to sv, and zh-CN to zh.

Verify every ID against Crowdin's language list rather than assuming the two-letter form exists. Several languages have no bare two-letter ID at all: Swedish is sv-SE, and sv-FI reduces to the same sv.json, so enabling both would collide.

Chinese ships as Simplified only under the bare zh locale, so every zh-* browser resolves to it, including Traditional readers. Adding Traditional later means a new zh-Hant catalog with a languages_mapping entry for zh-TW; zh keeps its Simplified meaning, so no rename or stored-preference migration is needed. That addition also requires matching by script subtag in client/src/stores/locale.ts, because the current base-language fallback would send zh-Hant to zh.

Adding User-Facing Copy

Feature branches must:

1. Add the source message to client/src/locales/en.json.
2. Preserve every placeholder and the plural-message structure when editing an existing message.
3. Run pnpm --filter client validate:locales.

Do not add the key to target catalogs. Target catalogs are sparse and contain only real Crowdin translations. Vue I18n resolves an absent target key through the complete English catalog, including English ICU plural rules.

CI rejects changes to existing target catalogs in ordinary pull requests. The validated l10n_main Crowdin PR is the only routine writer. A normal issue-linked pull request may add an empty catalog only as part of the new-language setup described below.

Do not create or improve target-language translations directly in Git. Crowdin does not continuously import repository translations after initial setup, so a later Crowdin export would overwrite those changes. Apply any emergency target-catalog fix in Crowdin before the next export.

When an English edit changes meaning rather than wording, prefer a new message key. If the key must remain, explicitly invalidate or clear the affected translations in Crowdin so an outdated translation is not exported for the new meaning.

Plural Messages

Plural messages use ICU MessageFormat:

{count, plural, =0 {No books} one {1 book} other {# books}}

Pass the raw numeric value through the interpolation object:

t("library.bookCount", { count });

Do not use Vue I18n's positional plural argument, pre-format count, or add pipe-separated branches. ICU selects CLDR plural categories and formats # for the active locale. Every translated target message that is present must preserve the source arguments and exact selectors such as =0, and must include every cardinal category required by its locale. Slovenian therefore includes one, two, few, and other; other locales use their own CLDR categories. An untranslated target message is omitted so Vue I18n formats the English fallback with English plural rules.

Repository validation compiles ordinary Vue I18n messages and rejects malformed syntax. For ICU plurals, it rejects malformed syntax, empty options, changed argument types or styles, changed plural offsets, missing locale categories, mismatched arguments or exact selectors, and legacy pipe branches. It also rejects embedded HTML and Unicode em dash characters. Human review is still required for the wording of each locale's plural branches.

Changing the plural structure of an existing English message, rather than only its wording, invalidates every translation of that key because the target branches no longer match the source. Clear or invalidate the affected translations in Crowdin before the next export so translators re-author them in the new structure.

Styled Counts

When the count needs its own markup, use IcuCountText instead of <i18n-t>, because compiled ICU messages cannot bind Vue I18n slots:

<IcuCountText
  keypath="tools.bulkRename.confirmDialog.body"
  :count="renameCount"
>
  <template #count="{ value }">
    <strong>{{ value }}</strong>
  </template>
</IcuCountText>

The component only supplies count, so its message must not require other arguments, and validation requires every branch of such a message to render exactly one #.

Translation Delivery

After an English source change reaches main:

1. Crowdin synchronizes client/src/locales/en.json.
2. Translators update target strings in Crowdin.
3. The scheduled or manually dispatched Crowdin Translation Sync workflow verifies that Crowdin's source keys match en.json.
4. The workflow requests only translated strings, removes the empty values Crowdin emits for untranslated nested JSON entries, and validates the resulting sparse catalogs.
5. Before writing, the workflow rejects exports that omit an existing translation or replace one with English source text.
6. Only after validation and retention checks pass, the workflow updates l10n_main and opens a pull request to main.
7. CI verifies that the pull request changes only the fifteen target catalogs and runs the normal client checks.
8. A maintainer reviews and squash-merges the pull request.
9. The .github/workflows/crowdin-branch-cleanup.yml workflow deletes the l10n_main service branch. The next export recreates it from the current main when translations change.

Deleting that branch is required, not tidiness. It guarantees that every later export starts from the current main. The cleanup workflow runs when a pull request from l10n_main is closed as well as merged.

Translation pull requests retain the configured i18n(client) title and commit format. The i18n commit type produces a patch release and an Internationalization release-note section. CROWDIN_PR_TOKEN must contain a fine-grained GitHub token with repository contents and pull-request write access. A separate token is required because pull requests created with the workflow's default GITHUB_TOKEN do not trigger normal pull-request workflows.

The retention check distinguishes the initial complete legacy catalogs from later sparse catalogs. In a complete legacy catalog, it protects values that differ from English and ignores copied English fallbacks. Once a catalog is sparse, every existing key is treated as an intentional translation, including technical terms that legitimately match English.

An intentional removal requires a manual workflow dispatch with its exact locale:message.key value in allowed_translation_losses. Separate multiple acknowledgements with commas. Unknown, misspelled, duplicate, and unused acknowledgements fail the run, so this input cannot act as a broad bypass. Scheduled runs never acknowledge translation loss automatically.

Adding a New Language

Add languages through a normal issue-linked pull request before enabling their Crowdin export. This ensures the application, validation, and Crowdin PR allowlist are ready before Crowdin creates the first translation update.

1. Choose the locale identifiers

Choose both:

• The application locale and catalog filename, preferably a canonical BCP 47 identifier such as fr or fr-CA.
• The exact Crowdin language ID shown in Crowdin's language-code reference.

Crowdin's export_languages entries use Crowdin language IDs, while %two_letters_code% controls the exported filename. If two enabled variants share the same two-letter code, or the application identifier differs from Crowdin's two-letter code, add a per-file languages_mapping entry in crowdin.yml so exports cannot collide. For example:

files:
  - source: /client/src/locales/en.json
    translation: /client/src/locales/%two_letters_code%.json
    languages_mapping:
      two_letters_code:
        fr-CA: fr-CA

Never enable two Crowdin languages that resolve to the same catalog path.

2. Register the application locale

Update packages/types/src/locale.ts:

• Add the application locale to SUPPORTED_LOCALES.
• Add its native-language display name to LOCALE_LABELS.
• Set ltr or rtl in LOCALE_DIRECTIONS.

The shared locale list automatically updates the language picker, server preference validation, and client locale typing. For an RTL language, manually verify the document direction and responsive layouts in addition to setting rtl.

3. Add the catalog and locale behavior

Create client/src/locales/<locale>.json as an empty object. The catalog remains sparse and gains entries only when the controlled Crowdin workflow exports real translations.

A catalog may instead arrive already translated, for example from a bulk translation pass. That is allowed, but the translations then exist only in Git and Crowdin will overwrite them unless they are imported first. Follow "Seed existing translations into Crowdin" below before enabling export.

Review client/src/stores/locale.ts and add browser-locale matching coverage to client/src/stores/__tests__/locale.spec.ts, especially for regional variants.

Each translated ICU plural message that is present must carry exactly the CLDR categories reported for the locale, plus every exact selector such as =0 from the English source. Both directions matter:

• A missing category fails validate:locales. Czech, Russian, and Ukrainian translations need few and many in every translated plural message.
• An extra category leaves Crowdin nowhere to store it, because the editor renders only the categories the locale defines. Chinese has just other, so an inherited one branch produces a permanent difference that scripts/crowdin-verify/verify.mjs --reconcile can never close.

Extend the exhaustive ICU runtime tests in client/src/i18n/icu.spec.ts with counts that reach every category. Derive them from Intl.PluralRules rather than by analogy, because languages that report the same category set do not map counts the same way: Russian and Ukrainian select many for 5 and reach other only through a fraction such as 1.5, while Czech selects other for 5 and reserves many for fractions.

4. Seed existing translations into Crowdin

This applies only when real translations already exist in Git. English fallback values are omitted rather than imported.

Crowdin does not import repository translations on its own. Without untranslated-string omission, a pre-translated catalog that was never imported can be silently reverted to English by an export. The controlled workflow requests omission and prunes Crowdin's empty nested-JSON placeholders instead.

Order matters, because merging the crowdin.yml change enables export for the language:

1. Pause translation synchronization, or keep the language out of export_languages until verification passes.
2. Add the target language in Crowdin.
3. Import the catalog with Crowdin's translation import, allowing translations that match the source so entries such as product names and identifiers are not dropped.
4. Verify, reconcile, and only then enable export.

The progress percentage does not verify anything. Crowdin's bulk translation import is lossy: it silently skips entries that the per-string translation endpoint accepts. Observed causes include translations that add punctuation the English source lacks, and ICU messages carrying a plural category the source does not use, such as Spanish or Portuguese many. A language can report 96 to 98 percent while real translations are missing, and those gaps export as English over good translations in Git.

Verify by building the export and diffing it against the catalog:

CROWDIN_TOKEN=... node scripts/crowdin-verify/verify.mjs es-ES es.json

The script exits non-zero while any key differs. Pass --reconcile to push the remaining strings through the per-string endpoint, which accepts what the bulk import rejected:

CROWDIN_TOKEN=... node scripts/crowdin-verify/verify.mjs es-ES es.json --reconcile

A language is safe to export only when every real Git translation is present in Crowdin. Do not reconcile a full legacy catalog blindly because that would record English fallback values as translations.

5. Allow Crowdin export and PR delivery

Update crowdin.yml:

• Add the exact Crowdin language ID to export_languages.
• Add languages_mapping when the desired filename is not the language's unique %two_letters_code% output.

TARGET_CATALOGS is derived from SUPPORTED_LOCALES. If the Crowdin language ID differs from the application locale, add the exception to CROWDIN_LANGUAGE_ID_OVERRIDES in client/scripts/locale-configuration.mjs.

Add the new target catalog path to .github/workflows/crowdin-translations.yml and scripts/classify-crowdin-pr.sh. Do not allow en.json or broaden either rule to the whole locales directory. The synchronization script checks these lists and crowdin.yml against the shared locale configuration before contacting Crowdin.

Before merging, add the target language in Crowdin while the current main configuration still excludes it from export_languages, or pause translation synchronization. Merge the repository support before allowing the first export. After Crowdin synchronizes the new English source, dispatch Crowdin Translation Sync manually and confirm that the generated pull request changes only explicitly allowed target catalogs.

6. Verify the new language

Run:

pnpm --filter @bookorbit/types build
pnpm --filter client validate:locales
pnpm --filter client lint:check
pnpm --filter server lint:check
pnpm typecheck:server
pnpm typecheck:client
pnpm --filter client exec vitest run src/stores/__tests__/locale.spec.ts
pnpm --filter server exec vitest run src/modules/user-preferences/user-preferences.service.test.ts

Then verify manually:

• The language picker shows the native label.
• Browser detection selects the intended locale without confusing regional variants.
• Refreshing the application preserves the selected locale.
• <html lang> and <html dir> are correct.
• Number, date, and relative-time formatting use the intended locale.
• Representative desktop and mobile screens handle translated text expansion.
• RTL layout, keyboard navigation, focus states, dialogs, menus, and popovers remain usable when applicable.
• A manual Crowdin export produces the expected filename and passes all PR checks.
• For a seeded catalog, scripts/crowdin-verify/verify.mjs reports zero differing keys.

Only enable scheduled export for the new language after this manual round trip succeeds.

Crowdin Project Settings

Use the native GitHub integration in Source and translation files mode with only main connected. Do not use Target file bundles mode or automatic feature-branch discovery. Leave source synchronization enabled, but disable the integration's scheduled translation synchronization and pull-request creation. The repository workflow owns translation export and delivery.

Initial import settings:

• Import existing translations once.
• Allow target translations to match the source.
• Do not continuously import translations from GitHub afterward.
• Keep Push Sources disabled.

Export settings:

• Skip untranslated strings: on.
• Skip untranslated files: off.
• Export only approved translations: off unless the review policy changes explicitly.

Crowdin preserves untranslated nested JSON keys with empty values even when untranslated strings are skipped. client/scripts/sync-crowdin-translations.mjs removes those empty entries, restores English source-key ordering, validates every translated message, and refuses to write catalogs if Crowdin has not synchronized the current English keys.

The Crowdin Translation Sync workflow requires:

• CROWDIN_TOKEN, with permission to read project files, strings, and translation builds.
• CROWDIN_PR_TOKEN, a fine-grained GitHub token with repository contents and pull-request write access.
• Optional repository variable CROWDIN_PROJECT_ID; the BookOrbit project ID is the script default.

Configure variable mismatches and leading or trailing whitespace as Crowdin QA errors. Keep punctuation and length checks enabled, and include translator instructions for Vue I18n plural branches, the HTML prohibition, and the Unicode em dash prohibition.

Use a daily translation export schedule and manual synchronization before releases. Keep automatic merging disabled.