Make internationalization files easier to update

[jaumard]

By reading the documentation of Internationalization I have to create manually all the intl_*lang*.arb files. But once it's done and I need to update my translation (example I removed and/or added screens), how can I update the localisations ? What's the procedure in that case ?

Because having to manually search for the new messages into intl_messages.arb and after add them into each intl_*lang*.arb is not really an option...

Having the Intl package that merge all the translation and add/remove/update for all langage.
On angular the i18n tool is doing it and I find it really cool to work with.

[ebeem]

run this script in your project directory to generate translations from .arb files. You have to specify them all, here I am using ar & en in addition to the default messages.
Do not forget to change your output-dir and path of your .arb files if they differ.

flutter pub pub run intl_translation:generate_from_arb --output-dir=lib/l10n --no-use-deferred-loading lib/localization/localizations.dart lib/l10n/intl_ar.arb lib/l10n/intl_en.arb lib/l10n/intl_messages.arb

note: you have to add the dependency intl_translation: ">=0.16.6" to your pubspec.yaml in dev_dependencies section to run this script

as far as I am concerned, modifying the other .arb files to include your new strings is manual.

[jaumard]

Thanks @ebeem I have no problem generating all the files, it's working great my concern is more than the update has to be almost full manual... If you have two/tree language it can be manageable but once you have 10/20 language much less doable :)

[zoechi]

If you use https://translate.google.com/ it remembers previously made translations.
Then you just have to add the missing ones.

[guyzk]

This is really a painful issue and I do hope that the flutter team will make a localization tool instead of this tiring process.

[zoechi]

There is no need to use the intl package. It is convenient when translate.google.com is used,
but there is also https://flutter.io/docs/development/accessibility-and-localization/internationalization#an-alternative-class-for-the-apps-localized-resources

[edlman]

I'd like to see something similar to (or same as) gettext, msgmerge and msgformat in Dart/Flutter. Its format is quite simple and easy to use, it's supported on almost all platforms and it supports incremental and fuzzy translations. And there are online and offline (windows, mac, linux) tools for translations. It's a pitty Google didn't choose it for Dart and created own system which lacks some important functionalities.
There is a Dart package https://pub.dev/packages/gettext, which may be a solution. I didn't try it yet.

[cielo]

I was curious about this too. If new texts are added to internationalized app, then new fresh arb files will need to be generated.

The thing is that if there are hundreds of translations already done for languages, but a dozen new translations need to be added, it is quite troublesome and time-consuming to find and update those texts out of hundreds of texts. What I mean by 'update' is that you have to merge newly generated arb files with full set of texts with existing arb files with all translations without newly added texts,

More so, all these steps have to be done manually, and there is no graceful way to merge or incrementally update arb files. Is there a way to easily merge or incrementally update arb files? e.g. Some thing similar to what git merge does.

[aleksakrstic]

You can use Flutter Intl plugin for IDE to get rid of manual execution of intl_translation tool whenever you add new string key to ARB files:

• VS Code: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=localizely.flutter-intl
• Android Studio: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/13666-flutter-intl

For translations from main language to remaining languages, you can try Localizely platform.

[cielo]

@aleksakrstic

You can use Flutter Intl plugin for IDE to get rid of manual execution of intl_translation tool whenever you add new string key to ARB files:

That seems to be a great extension to avoid running commands manually, and maintaining source of truth in arb file.

But.. it does seem to create more work in maintaining arb files now. For instance, if I add/update/remove dozens of translations in source English arb file, I will still have to manually do the same thing in dozens of other localization arb files, manually.

Because arb files are now have to be maintained manually, I think it can get more error prone?

• e.g. no syntax checking, typo checking in property keys,
• e.g. how do you ensure that Polish localization arb file has all three hundred translation keys that are present in english arb file? What if I have 15 arb files to maintain

Perhaps, Localizely platform that you mentioned solves above issues?

Anyhow, ideal workflow that I expected is that whenever a new Intl.message gets added to a dart localization file, it would automatically get added & merged to existing arb files. If I have to manually run a command to do this, that isn't a big deal for me.

This way, the only remaining work that is left is to replace default translation with other translations.

This way, I can guarantee that all translation keys will always be present in all arb files, and they will be in sync with each other all the time, while the only difference would be their translation texts.

[aleksakrstic]

@cielo
If you use such Flutter Intl plugin for Android Studio, you can select a string in your Dart code, press Alt+Enter and extract the string to all ARB files, not just to the main file. Using that practice, you can easily maintain the same keys in all ARB files.

That extraction functionality is not yet available for VS Code plugin, but I expect it soon since the plugin for Android Studio and VS Code are developed in parallel.