Guide to translate your Laravel applications

Installation

1. Add the package via Composer:

composer require tio/laravel

1. Create a new translation project from the UI.
2. Copy the initializer into your Laravel app (config/translation.php) or execute php artisan vendor:publish.

The initializer looks like this:

<?php
return [
    'key' => env('TRANSLATIONIO_KEY'),
    'source_locale' => 'en',
    'target_locales' => ['fr', 'nl', 'de', 'es']
];

1. Add the API key (TRANSLATIONIO_KEY) in your .env file.
2. Initialize your project and push existing translations to Translation.io with:

php artisan translation:init

If you need to add or remove languages in the future, please read this section about that.

Usage

Sync

To send new translatable keys/strings and get new translations from Translation.io, simply run:

php artisan translation:sync

Sync and Show Purgeable

If you need to find out what are the unused keys/strings from Translation.io, using the current branch as reference:

php artisan translation:sync_and_show_purgeable

As the name says, this operation will also perform a sync at the same time.

Sync and Purge

If you need to remove unused keys/strings from Translation.io, using the current branch as reference:

php artisan translation:sync_and_purge

As the name says, this operation will also perform a sync at the same time.

Warning: all keys that are not present in the current local branch will be permanently deleted from Translation.io.

Localization syntaxes

Laravel Localization (PHP key/values)

The default Laravel method to localize.

// Regular
__('inbox.title');

// Regular with sublevel key
__('inbox.menu.title');

// Pluralization
trans_choice('inbox.messages', $number);

// Interpolation
__('inbox.hello', ['name' => $user->name]);

With the PHP file lang/en/inbox.php:

<?php
return [
    'title' => 'Title to be translated',
    'hello' => 'Hello :name',
    'messages' => 'One message|Many messages',
    'menu' => [
        'title' => 'Title of menu'
    ]
];

Notes:

• trans can also be used instead of __.
• You can organize your PHP files with subfolders like en/subfolder/inbox.php using keys like subfolder/inbox.title.

Laravel Localization (JSON source text)

A new feature of Laravel 5.4 is the possibility to use __ with the source text (and not only with keys like in the previous section).

These translations are stored into JSON files located in the lang directory.

// Regular
__("Text to be translated");

// Pluralization
trans_choice(__('One message|Many messages'), $number);

// Interpolation
__('Hello :name', ['name' => $user->name]);

With the JSON file lang/en.json:

{
    "Text to be translated": "",
    "One message|Many messages": "",
    "Hello :name": ""
}

Notes:

• To spend less time dealing with multiple JSON files, we advise to only edit the original language (usually en.json) to add new strings, and leave the translations empty. During a sync, This package will automatically create and fill the JSON files of the target languages.

• If you want to organize your JSON files by feature, you can register new paths in AppServiceProvider like this:

public function boot()
{
    $loader = $this->app['translation.loader'];

    // or 'resources/lang/my_feature' in Laravel < 9
    $loader->addJsonPath(base_path('lang/my_feature')); 
}

GetText

This package adds the GetText support to Laravel. We strongly suggest that you use GetText to localize your application since it allows an easier and more complete syntax.

Moreover, you won’t need to create and manage any PHP or JSON file since your code will be automatically scanned for any string to translate.

// Regular
t("Text to be translated");

// Pluralization
n("Singular text", "Plural text", $number);

// Regular with context
p("context", "Text to be translated");

// Pluralization with context
np("context", "Singular text", "Plural text", $number);

// Simple Interpolations (works with n, p and np too)
t('Hello %s', $user->name);

// Complex Interpolations (works with n, p and np too)
t(':city1 is bigger than :city2', [ ':city1' => 'NYC', ':city2' => 'BXL' ]);

Manage Languages

Add or Remove Language

You can add or remove a language by updating 'target_locales' => [] in your config/translation.php file, and executing php artisan translation:sync.

If you want to add a new language with existing translations (ex. if you already have a translated PHP file in your lang directory), you will need to create a new project on Translation.io and run php artisan translation:init for them to appear.

Edit Language

To edit existing languages while keeping their translations (e.g. changing from en to en-US).

1. Create a new project on Translation.io with the correct languages.
2. Adapt config/translation.php (new API key and languages)
3. Adapt directory language names in lang or resources/lang (optional: adapt GetText .po headers)
4. Execute php artisan translation:init and check that everything went fine.
5. Invite your collaborators in the new project.
6. Remove the old project.

Since you created a new project, the translation history and tags will unfortunately be lost.

Custom Languages

A custom language is always derived from an existing language. It’s useful if you want to adapt some translations to another instance of your application, or to a specific customer.

The structure of a custom language is: existing language code + - + custom text, where custom text can only contain alphanumeric characters and -.

Examples: en-microsoft or fr-BE-custom.

Custom languages can be added and used like any other language.

Change the current locale

Globally

The easiest way to change the current locale is with the set.locale Middleware.

// in routes/web.php

// Solution 1: Apply the locale selection to root.
//             => https://yourdomain.com?locale=fr
Route::get('/', function () {
    return view('welcome');
})->middleware('set.locale');

// Solution 2: Apply the locale selection to many routes.
//             => https://yourdomain.com/...?locale=fr
Route::middleware('set.locale')->group(function () {
    Route::get('/', function () {
        return view('welcome');
    });
});

// Solution 3: prefix your routes with the locale and apply it.
//             => https://yourdomain.com/fr
//             => https://yourdomain.com/fr/...
Route::prefix('{locale?}')->middleware('set.locale')->group(function() {
    Route::get('/', function () {
        return view('welcome');
    });
});

First time the user will connect, it will automatically set the locale extracted from the browser HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE value, and keep it in the session between requests.

The set.locale Middleware code is here, feel free to adapt it with your own locale management.

Locally

Change the current locale with:

use Tio\Laravel\Facade as Translation;

Translation::setLocale('fr');

Frontend Localization

Using this Package

This package is also able to cover frontend localization (React, Vue, …).

There are several ways to pass the translation strings from the backend to the frontend: JavaScript serialization, data- HTML attributes, JSON files etc.

The easiest strategy when dealing with React/Vue would be to pass the corresponding translations as props when mounting the components.

Notes:

• You can structure the i18n props with multiple levels of depth and pass the subtree as props to each of your sub-components.
• It also works great with server-side rendering of your components.

Using our official React & JavaScript package

As Translation.io is directly integrated in the great Lingui internationalization framework, you can also consider frontend localization as a completely different localization project.

Please read more about this on:

• Website: https://translation.io/lingui
• GitHub page: https://github.com/translation/lingui

Advanced Configuration Options

The config/translation.php file can take several optional configuration options.

Some options are described below but for an exhaustive list, please refer to translation.php.

Ignored PHP keys

If you would like to ignore specific PHP keys, or even entire PHP files or subdirectories from the source language, you can use the ignored_key_prefixes option.

For example:

<?php
return [
    ...
    'ignored_key_prefixes' => [
        'validation',        // ignore the whole validation.php file.
        'validation.custom', // ignore the "custom" subtree in validation.php file.
        'subfolder/more',    // ignore the whole subfolder/more.php file.
    ],
    ...
];

Note: the documentation for this package is also available on https://github.com/translation/laravel.