bctranslate ⚡

Notice: This app is in Beta mode, work in progress; currently works for html files, contribution is welcome at: BCtranslate github repo

bctranslate is a command-line tool to automatically transform source code into an i18n-ready format. It extracts hardcoded strings from your files, replaces them with calls to a translation function, and generates locale files with translations powered by Argos Translate.

It's designed to be a quick and easy way to "bake in" internationalization into a project with minimal refactoring.

Features

• Automatic String Extraction: Finds and extracts hardcoded strings from various file types.
• Code Transformation: Replaces extracted strings with i18n function calls (e.g., t('key')).
• Machine Translation: Uses Python and Argos Translate to provide instant translations for extracted strings.
• Project-Aware: Automatically detects project types (Vue, React, Vanilla JS/HTML) to apply the correct parsing and transformation rules.
• Framework Support:
  • Vue (.vue, .js, .ts)
  • React (.jsx, .tsx, .js, .ts)
  • Vanilla JS and HTML
  • JSON (.json)
• Dry Run Mode: Preview all changes without modifying any files.

Prerequisites

1. Node.js: Requires Node.js version 18.0.0 or higher.
2. Python: Requires Python 3.8 or higher.
3. Argos Translate: The argostranslate Python package must be installed.

   pip install argostranslate

Installation

You can install bctranslate globally via npm:

npm install -g .

This will make the bctranslate command available in your terminal.

Usage

The most common use case is to run bctranslate in the root of your project to automatically detect and process all relevant files.

bctranslate

Command-Line Options

bctranslate [file] [from] [options]

Arguments:

• [file]: (Optional) A specific file or glob pattern to process. If omitted, the tool auto-detects files based on the project type.
• [from]: (Optional) The source language code for translation (default: en).

Options:

Option	Description	Default
-t, --to <lang>	Target language code for translation.	fr
-d, --dry-run	Preview changes without writing to files.	false
-o, --outdir <dir>	Output directory for new locale files (default: in-place).
--no-setup	Skip the generation of i18n setup files (e.g., i18n.js).
--json-mode <mode>	For .json files, translate values or the full file structure.	values
-v, --verbose	Enable verbose logging for debugging.	false
-h, --help	Display help for the command.

Examples

Auto-translate a whole project from English to French:

bctranslate --to fr

Translate a single HTML file from English to Spanish:

bctranslate "src/index.html" en -t es

Preview changes for all Vue files without modifying them:

bctranslate "src/**/*.vue" --dry-run