Gettext is an internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) system commonly used for writing multilingual programs. Gettext is a standard for i18n in different communities, meaning there is a great set of tooling for developers and translators. This project is an implementation of the Gettext system in Elixir.

Add :gettext to your list of dependencies in mix.exs (use $ mix hex.info gettext to find the latest version):

defp deps do
  [
    {:gettext, ">= 0.0.0"}
  ]
end

Documentation for Gettext is available on Hex.

To use Gettext, define a Gettext backend:

defmodule MyApp.Gettext do
  use Gettext.Backend, otp_app: :my_app
end

and invoke the Gettext API, which consists of the *gettext macros that get imported if you use Gettext:

use Gettext, backend: MyApp.Gettext
# Simple message
gettext("Here is one string to translate")
# Plural message
number_of_apples = 4
ngettext("The apple is ripe", "The apples are ripe", number_of_apples)
# Domain-based message
dgettext("errors", "Here is an error message to translate")

Messages in Gettext are stored in Portable Object files (.po). Such files must be placed at priv/gettext/LOCALE/LC_MESSAGES/DOMAIN.po, where LOCALE is the locale and DOMAIN is the domain (the default domain is called default).

For example, the messages for pt_BR from the first two *gettext calls in the snippet above must be placed in the priv/gettext/pt_BR/LC_MESSAGES/default.po file with the following contents:

msgid "Here is one string to translate"
msgstr "Aqui está um texto para traduzir"
msgid "Here is the string to translate"
msgid_plural "Here are the strings to translate"
msgstr[0] "Aqui está o texto para traduzir"
msgstr[1] "Aqui estão os textos para traduzir"

.po files are text-based and can be edited directly by translators. Some may even use existing tools for managing them, such as Poedit or poeditor.com.

Finally, because messages are based on strings, your source code does not lose readability as you still see literal strings, like gettext("here is an example"), instead of paths like translate("some.path.convention").

Read the documentation for the Gettext module for more information on locales, interpolation, pluralization, and other features.

Gettext is able to automatically extract messages from your source code, alleviating developers and translators from the repetitive and error-prone work of maintaining message files.

When extracted from source, Gettext places messages into .pot files, which are template files. You can then merge those templates files into message files for each specific locale your application is being currently translated to.

In other words, the typical workflow looks like this:

1. Add gettext calls to your source code. No need to touch message files at this point as Gettext will return the given string if no message is available:

   gettext("Welcome back!")

2. Once changes to the source are complete, automatically sync all existing entries to .pot (template files) in priv/gettext by running:

   mix gettext.extract

3. You can then merge .pot files into locale-specific .po files:

   # Merge .pot into all locales
   mix gettext.merge priv/gettext
   # Merge .pot into one specific locale
   mix gettext.merge priv/gettext --locale en

It is also possible to both extract and merge messages in one step with mix gettext.extract --merge.

Copyright 2015 Plataformatec Copyright 2020 Dashbit

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at:

https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.