[Translation] %parameters% are not replaced when file is first dumped as +intl-icuand then read

[ruudk]

Symfony version(s) affected: 4.4

Description
We have a FileDumper that converts messages.en.yml to messages.en.php files. Since 4.4 this file became message+intl-icu.en.php with the same content.

Upon reading these +incl-icu.php files, the %placeholder% are no longer replaced with the correct value.

Spoke with @yceruto in #35264 (comment) and he suggested this is a different issue.

How to reproduce
See commits on https://github.com/ruudk/symfony-translation-bug-poc/commits/master

Possible Solution
The FileDumper should not just add +intl-icu to files.

[yceruto]

Hi @ruudk, I'll check your reproducer at some point this week. Thank you for opening this issue.

[nicwortel]

@yceruto I came here through #35264 because we are experiencing a similar issue. I wonder if this issue is really a bug though. The ICU message format is a different format than Symfony's one. Where Symfony's format uses percentage signs for placeholders (%placeholder%), ICU uses brackets ({placeholder}). So I guess it's expected that %placeholder% doesn't work in a +intl-icu file.

Having said that, I do believe that #34797 that was released with Symfony 4.4.2 and 5.0.2 is a breaking change for use cases where translation files are created that don't exist yet. In our situation, we use https://github.com/php-translation/symfony-bundle to download translations from Loco and dump them to (gitignored) XLIFF files during our build process. Using symfony/translation v4.4.1, the files dumped are messages.en.xlf, messages.nl.xlf, etc. After updating to symfony/translation v4.4.2, the dumped file names are suddenly changed to messages+intl-icu.en.xlf, messages+intl-icu.nl.xlf, etc.

So the assumption in #34797 is that the translation files already exist and the decision between intl-icu or the "old" format is based entirely on the existance of those files. Whenever that is not the case (for example when using https://github.com/php-translation/symfony-bundle to download translations from an external source, adding a new language, etc.), this breaks with the previous behaviour in v4.4.1.

I'm not sure if this issue is the right place for what I just wrote, let me know if I should move it to #35264 or should create a new issue.

[yceruto]

@nicwortel I can confirm what you said. Let's revert #34797 in the meantime. see #35351

[yceruto]

The ICU message format is a different format than Symfony's one. Where Symfony's format uses percentage signs for placeholders (%placeholder%), ICU uses brackets ({placeholder}). So I guess it's expected that %placeholder% doesn't work in a +intl-icu file.

Let's close because we can do nothing here. Thank you @ruudk and @nicwortel.

[XWB]

I'm having exactly the same issue as @nicwortel

[michaelKaefer]

I tried and searched for more than 1.5 hours to find this.. It was really a pain not knowing why it did not work. At least an error would be cool. @ruudk Can you reopen this issue?

[ruudk]

Why? This has been fixed with another release.

[michaelKaefer]

@ruudk Ah, I didn't know. How could I have seen this on my own?

[ruudk]

No worries. This PR reverted the broken behaviour: #35351

[xoniq]

As of 2023 this is still an issue. On a new project.

[Nek-]

Oh my. I'm having a headache for some minutes/hours. Removing +intl-icu suffix after the filename was fixing the issue. 😬

• Symfony 7.0
• New project setup with symfony cli
• Translation files generated with the Symfony commands

However, this looks more like an issue of the documentation that is highlighting %var% instead of {var} as suggested here: https://symfony.com/doc/current/reference/formats/message_format.html