The Ruby I18n (shorthand for _internationalization_) gem which is shipped with Ruby on Rails (starting from Rails 2.2) provides an easy-to-use and extensible framework for *translating your application to a single custom language* other than English or for *providing multi-language support* in your application.
The process of "internationalization" usually means to abstract all strings and other locale specific bits (such as date or currency formats) out of your application. The process of "localization" means to provide translations and localized formats for these bits. [1]
So, in the process of _internationalizing_ your Rails application you have to:
* Ensure you have support for i18n
* Tell Rails where to find locale dictionaries
* Tell Rails how to set, preserve and switch locale
In the process of _localizing_ your application you'll probably want to do following three things:
NOTE: The Ruby I18n framework provides you with all necessary means for internationalization/localization of your Rails application. You may, however, use any of various plugins and extensions available, which add additional functionality or features. See the Rails "I18n Wiki":http://rails-i18n.org/wiki for more information.
Internationalization is a complex problem. Natural languages differ in so many ways (e.g. in pluralization rules) that it is hard to provide tools for solving all problems at once. For that reason the Rails I18n API focuses on:
As part of this solution, *every static string in the Rails framework* -- e.g. Active Record validation messages, time and date formats -- *has been internationalized*, so _localization_ of a Rails application means "over-riding" these defaults.
NOTE: It is possible (or even desirable) to swap the shipped Simple backend with a more powerful one, which would store translation data in a relational database, GetText dictionary, or similar. See section "Using different backends":#using-different-backends below.
Following the _convention over configuration_ philosophy, Rails will set up your application with reasonable defaults. If you need different settings, you can overwrite them easily.
This means, that in the +:en+ locale, the key _hello_ will map to the _Hello world_ string. Every string inside Rails is internationalized in this way, see for instance Active Record validation messages in the "+activerecord/lib/active_record/locale/en.yml+":http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activerecord/lib/active_record/locale/en.yml file or time and date formats in the "+activesupport/lib/active_support/locale/en.yml+":http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activesupport/lib/active_support/locale/en.yml file. You can use YAML or standard Ruby Hashes to store translations in the default (Simple) backend.
NOTE: The i18n library takes a *pragmatic approach* to locale keys (after "some discussion":http://groups.google.com/group/rails-i18n/browse_thread/thread/14dede2c7dbe9470/80eec34395f64f3c?hl=en), including only the _locale_ ("language") part, like +:en+, +:pl+, not the _region_ part, like +:en-US+ or +:en-UK+, which are traditionally used for separating "languages" and "regional setting" or "dialects". Many international applications use only the "language" element of a locale such as +:cz+, +:th+ or +:es+ (for Czech, Thai and Spanish). However, there are also regional differences within different language groups that may be important. For instance, in the +:en-US+ locale you would have $ as a currency symbol, while in +:en-UK+, you would have £. Nothing stops you from separating regional and other settings in this way: you just have to provide full "English - United Kingdom" locale in a +:en-UK+ dictionary. Various "Rails I18n plugins":http://rails-i18n.org/wiki such as "Globalize2":http://github.com/joshmh/globalize2/tree/master may help you implement it.
The *translations load path* (+I18n.load_path+) is just a Ruby Array of paths to your translation files that will be loaded automatically and available in your application. You can pick whatever directory and translation file naming scheme makes sense for you.
NOTE: The backend will lazy-load these translations when a translation is looked up for the first time. This makes it possible to just swap the backend with something else even after translations have already been announced.
The default +application.rb+ files has instructions on how to add locales from another directory and how to set a different default locale. Just uncomment and edit the specific lines.
For the sake of completeness, let's mention that if you do not want to use the +application.rb+ file for some reason, you can always wire up things manually, too.
To tell the I18n library where it can find your custom translation files you can specify the load path anywhere in your application - just make sure it gets run before any translations are actually looked up. You might also want to change the default locale. The simplest thing possible is to put the following into an initializer:
If you want to translate your Rails application to a *single language other than English* (the default locale), you can set I18n.default_locale to your locale in +application.rb+ or an initializer as shown above, and it will persist through the requests.
However, you would probably like to *provide support for more locales* in your application. In such case, you need to set and pass the locale between requests.
WARNING: You may be tempted to store the chosen locale in a _session_ or a _cookie_. *Do not do so*. The locale should be transparent and a part of the URL. This way you don't break people's basic assumptions about the web itself: if you send a URL of some page to a friend, she should see the same page, same content. A fancy word for this would be that you're being "_RESTful_":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer. Read more about the RESTful approach in "Stefan Tilkov's articles":http://www.infoq.com/articles/rest-introduction. There may be some exceptions to this rule, which are discussed below.
This requires you to pass the locale as a URL query parameter as in +http://example.com/books?locale=pt+. (This is, for example, Google's approach.) So +http://localhost:3000?locale=pt+ will load the Portuguese localization, whereas +http://localhost:3000?locale=de+ would load the German localization, and so on. You may skip the next section and head over to the *Internationalize your application* section, if you want to try things out by manually placing the locale in the URL and reloading the page.
Of course, you probably don't want to manually include the locale in every URL all over your application, or want the URLs look differently, e.g. the usual +http://example.com/pt/books+ versus +http://example.com/en/books+. Let's discuss the different options you have.
One option you have is to set the locale from the domain name where your application runs. For example, we want +www.example.com+ to load the English (or default) locale, and +www.example.es+ to load the Spanish locale. Thus the _top-level domain name_ is used for locale setting. This has several advantages:
assuming you would set +APP_CONFIG[:deutsch_website_url]+ to some value like +http://www.application.de+.
This solution has aforementioned advantages, however, you may not be able or may not want to provide different localizations ("language versions") on different domains. The most obvious solution would be to include locale code in the URL params (or request path).
The most usual way of setting (and passing) the locale would be to include it in URL params, as we did in the +I18n.locale = params[:locale]+ _before_filter_ in the first example. We would like to have URLs like +www.example.com/books?locale=ja+ or +www.example.com/ja/books+ in this case.
This approach has almost the same set of advantages as setting the locale from the domain name: namely that it's RESTful and in accord with the rest of the World Wide Web. It does require a little bit more work to implement, though.
Getting the locale from +params+ and setting it accordingly is not hard; including it in every URL and thus *passing it through the requests* is. To include an explicit option in every URL (e.g. +link_to( books_url(:locale => I18n.locale))+) would be tedious and probably impossible, of course.
Rails contains infrastructure for "centralizing dynamic decisions about the URLs" in its "+ApplicationController#default_url_options+":http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Base.html#M000515, which is useful precisely in this scenario: it enables us to set "defaults" for "+url_for+":http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Base.html#M000503 and helper methods dependent on it (by implementing/overriding this method).
Every helper method dependent on +url_for+ (e.g. helpers for named routes like +root_path+ or +root_url+, resource routes like +books_path+ or +books_url+, etc.) will now *automatically include the locale in the query string*, like this: +http://localhost:3001/?locale=ja+.
You may be satisfied with this. It does impact the readability of URLs, though, when the locale "hangs" at the end of every URL in your application. Moreover, from the architectural standpoint, locale is usually hierarchically above the other parts of the application domain: and URLs should reflect this.
You probably want URLs to look like this: +www.example.com/en/books+ (which loads the English locale) and +www.example.com/nl/books+ (which loads the Netherlands locale). This is achievable with the "over-riding +default_url_options+" strategy from above: you just have to set up your routes with "+path_prefix+":http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionController/Resources.html#M000354 option in this way:
Now, when you call the +books_path+ method you should get +"/en/books"+ (for the default locale). An URL like +http://localhost:3001/nl/books+ should load the Netherlands locale, then, and following calls to +books_path+ should return +"/nl/books"+ (because the locale changed).
Of course, you need to take special care of the root URL (usually "homepage" or "dashboard") of your application. An URL like +http://localhost:3001/nl+ will not work automatically, because the +root :to => "books#index"+ declaration in your +routes.rb+ doesn't take locale into account. (And rightly so: there's only one "root" URL.)
Do take special care about the *order of your routes*, so this route declaration does not "eat" other ones. (You may want to add it directly before the +root :to+ declaration.)
IMPORTANT: This solution has currently one rather big *downside*. Due to the _default_url_options_ implementation, you have to pass the +:id+ option explicitly, like this: +link_to 'Show', book_url(:id => book)+ and not depend on Rails' magic in code like +link_to 'Show', book+. If this should be a problem, have a look at two plugins which simplify work with routes in this way: Sven Fuchs's "routing_filter":http://github.com/svenfuchs/routing-filter/tree/master and Raul Murciano's "translate_routes":http://github.com/raul/translate_routes/tree/master. See also the page "How to encode the current locale in the URL":http://rails-i18n.org/wiki/wikipages/how-to-encode-the-current-locale-in-the-url in the Rails i18n Wiki.
In specific cases, it would make sense to set the locale from client-supplied information, i.e. not from the URL. This information may come for example from the users' preferred language (set in their browser), can be based on the users' geographical location inferred from their IP, or users can provide it simply by choosing the locale in your application interface and saving it to their profile. This approach is more suitable for web-based applications or services, not for websites -- see the box about _sessions_, _cookies_ and RESTful architecture above.
One source of client supplied information would be an +Accept-Language+ HTTP header. People may "set this in their browser":http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-lang-priorities or other clients (such as _curl_).
Of course, in a production environment you would need much more robust code, and could use a plugin such as Iain Hecker's "http_accept_language":http://github.com/iain/http_accept_language/tree/master or even Rack middleware such as Ryan Tomayko's "locale":http://github.com/rtomayko/rack-contrib/blob/master/lib/rack/locale.rb.
Another way of choosing the locale from client information would be to use a database for mapping the client IP to the region, such as "GeoIP Lite Country":http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecountry. The mechanics of the code would be very similar to the code above -- you would need to query the database for the user's IP, and look up your preferred locale for the country/region/city returned.
You can also provide users of your application with means to set (and possibly over-ride) the locale in your application interface, as well. Again, mechanics for this approach would be very similar to the code above -- you'd probably let users choose a locale from a dropdown list and save it to their profile in the database. Then you'd set the locale to this value.
OK! Now you've initialized I18n support for your Ruby on Rails application and told it which locale to use and how to preserve it between requests. With that in place, you're now ready for the really interesting stuff.
Let's _internationalize_ our application, i.e. abstract every locale-specific parts, and then _localize_ it, i.e. provide necessary translations for these abstracts.
Obviously there are *two strings that are localized to English*. In order to internationalize this code, *replace these strings* with calls to Rails' +#t+ helper with a key that makes sense for the translation:
<ruby>
# app/controllers/home_controller.rb
class HomeController < ApplicationController
def index
flash[:notice] = t(:hello_flash)
end
end
# app/views/home/index.html.erb
<h1><%=t :hello_world %></h1>
<p><%= flash[:notice] %></p>
</ruby>
When you now render this view, it will show an error message which tells you that the translations for the keys +:hello_world+ and +:hello_flash+ are missing.
NOTE: Rails adds a +t+ (+translate+) helper method to your views so that you do not need to spell out +I18n.t+ all the time. Additionally this helper will catch missing translations and wrap the resulting error message into a +<span class="translation_missing">+.
You may use YAML (+.yml+) or plain Ruby (+.rb+) files for storing your translations in SimpleStore. YAML is the preferred option among Rails developers. However, it has one big disadvantage. YAML is very sensitive to whitespace and special characters, so the application may not load your dictionary properly. Ruby files will crash your application on first request, so you may easily find what's wrong. (If you encounter any "weird issues" with YAML dictionaries, try putting the relevant portion of your dictionary into a Ruby file.)
OK! Now let's add a timestamp to the view, so we can demo the *date/time localization* feature as well. To localize the time format you pass the Time object to +I18n.l+ or (preferably) use Rails' +#l+ helper. You can pick a format by passing the +:format+ option -- by default the +:default+ format is used.
<ruby>
# app/views/home/index.html.erb
<h1><%=t :hello_world %></h1>
<p><%= flash[:notice] %></p
<p><%= l Time.now, :format => :short %></p>
</ruby>
And in our pirate translations file let's add a time format (it's already there in Rails' defaults for English):
TIP: Right now you might need to add some more date/time formats in order to make the I18n backend work as expected (at least for the 'pirate' locale). Of course, there's a great chance that somebody already did all the work by *translating Rails' defaults for your locale*. See the "rails-i18n repository at Github":http://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n/tree/master/rails/locale for an archive of various locale files. When you put such file(s) in +config/locales/+ directory, they will automatically be ready for use.
Rails 2.3 introduces another convenient localization feature: localized views (templates). Let's say you have a _BooksController_ in your application. Your _index_ action renders content in +app/views/books/index.html.erb+ template. When you put a _localized variant_ of this template: *+index.es.html.erb+* in the same directory, Rails will render content in this template, when the locale is set to +:es+. When the locale is set to the default locale, the generic +index.html.erb+ view will be used. (Future Rails versions may well bring this _automagic_ localization to assets in +public+, etc.)
You can make use of this feature, e.g. when working with a large amount of static content, which would be clumsy to put inside YAML or Ruby dictionaries. Bear in mind, though, that any change you would like to do later to the template must be propagated to all of them.
When you are using the default SimpleStore shipped with the i18n library, dictionaries are stored in plain-text files on the disc. Putting translations for all parts of your application in one file per locale could be hard to manage. You can store these files in a hierarchy which makes sense to you.
This way, you can separate model and model attribute names from text inside views, and all of this from the "defaults" (e.g. date and time formats). Other stores for the i18n library could provide different means of such separation.
NOTE: The default locale loading mechanism in Rails does not load locale files in nested dictionaries, like we have here. So, for this to work, we must explicitly tell Rails to look further:
You should have good understanding of using the i18n library now, knowing all necessary aspects of internationalizing a basic Rails application. In the following chapters, we'll cover it's features in more depth.
The +translate+ method also takes a +:scope+ option which can contain one or more additional keys that will be used to specify a “namespace” or scope for a translation key:
If the +:default+ value is a Symbol, it will be used as a key and translated. One can provide multiple values as default. The first one that results in a value will be returned.
E.g., the following first tries to translate the key +:missing+ and then the key +:also_missing.+ As both do not yield a result, the string "Not here" will be returned:
Also, a key can translate to a (potentially nested) hash of grouped translations. E.g., one can receive _all_ Active Record error messages as a Hash with:
In many cases you want to abstract your translations so that *variables can be interpolated into the translation*. For this reason the I18n API provides an interpolation feature.
All options besides +:default+ and +:scope+ that are passed to +#translate+ will be interpolated to the translation:
If a translation uses +:default+ or +:scope+ as an interpolation variable, an I+18n::ReservedInterpolationKey+ exception is raised. If a translation expects an interpolation variable, but this has not been passed to +#translate+, an +I18n::MissingInterpolationArgument+ exception is raised.
In English there are only one singular and one plural form for a given string, e.g. "1 message" and "2 messages". Other languages ("Arabic":http://www.unicode.org/cldr/data/charts/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html#ar, "Japanese":http://www.unicode.org/cldr/data/charts/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html#ja, "Russian":http://www.unicode.org/cldr/data/charts/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html#ru and many more) have different grammars that have additional or fewer "plural forms":http://www.unicode.org/cldr/data/charts/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html. Thus, the I18n API provides a flexible pluralization feature.
The +:count+ interpolation variable has a special role in that it both is interpolated to the translation and used to pick a pluralization from the translations according to the pluralization rules defined by CLDR:
The locale can be either set pseudo-globally to +I18n.locale+ (which uses +Thread.current+ like, e.g., +Time.zone+) or can be passed as an option to +#translate+ and +#localize+.
Generally we recommend using YAML as a format for storing translations. There are cases, though, where you want to store Ruby lambdas as part of your locale data, e.g. for special date formats.
You can use the methods +Model.human_name+ and +Model.human_attribute_name(attribute)+ to transparently look up translations for your model and attribute names.
Active Record validation error messages can also be translated easily. Active Record gives you a couple of namespaces where you can place your message translations in order to provide different messages and translation for certain models, attributes, and/or validations. It also transparently takes single table inheritance into account.
This way you can provide special translations for various error messages at different points in your models inheritance chain and in the attributes, models, or default scopes.
So, for example, instead of the default error message +"can not be blank"+ you could use the attribute name like this : +"Please fill in your %{attribute}"+.
* +distance_of_time_in_words+ translates and pluralizes its result and interpolates the number of seconds, minutes, hours, and so on. See "datetime.distance_in_words":http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/actionpack/lib/action_view/locale/en.yml#L51 translations.
* +datetime_select+ and +select_month+ use translated month names for populating the resulting select tag. See "date.month_names":http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activesupport/lib/active_support/locale/en.yml#L15 for translations. +datetime_select+ also looks up the order option from "date.order":http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activesupport/lib/active_support/locale/en.yml#L18 (unless you pass the option explicitely). All date selection helpers translate the prompt using the translations in the "datetime.prompts":http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/actionpack/lib/action_view/locale/en.yml#L83 scope if applicable.
* The +number_to_currency+, +number_with_precision+, +number_to_percentage+, +number_with_delimiter+, and +number_to_human_size+ helpers use the number format settings located in the "number":http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/actionpack/lib/action_view/locale/en.yml#L2 scope.
* +human_name+ and +human_attribute_name+ use translations for model names and attribute names if available in the "activerecord.models":http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activerecord/lib/active_record/locale/en.yml#L43 scope. They also support translations for inherited class names (e.g. for use with STI) as explained above in "Error message scopes".
* +ActiveRecord::Errors#generate_message+ (which is used by Active Record validations but may also be used manually) uses +human_name+ and +human_attribute_name+ (see above). It also translates the error message and supports translations for inherited class names as explained above in "Error message scopes".
*+ ActiveRecord::Errors#full_messages+ prepends the attribute name to the error message using a separator that will be looked up from "activerecord.errors.format.separator":http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/actionpack/lib/action_view/locale/en.yml#L91 (and which defaults to +' '+).
* +Array#to_sentence+ uses format settings as given in the "support.array":http://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activesupport/lib/active_support/locale/en.yml#L30 scope.
For several reasons the Simple backend shipped with Active Support only does the "simplest thing that could possibly work" _for Ruby on Rails_ [3] ... which means that it is only guaranteed to work for English and, as a side effect, languages that are very similar to English. Also, the simple backend is only capable of reading translations but can not dynamically store them to any format.
That does not mean you're stuck with these limitations, though. The Ruby I18n gem makes it very easy to exchange the Simple backend implementation with something else that fits better for your needs. E.g. you could exchange it with Globalize's Static backend:
The I18n API will catch all of these exceptions when they are thrown in the backend and pass them to the default_exception_handler method. This method will re-raise all exceptions except for +MissingTranslationData+ exceptions. When a +MissingTranslationData+ exception has been caught, it will return the exception’s error message string containing the missing key/scope.
In other contexts you might want to change this behaviour, though. E.g. the default exception handling does not allow to catch missing translations during automated tests easily. For this purpose a different exception handler can be specified. The specified exception handler must be a method on the I18n module:
Another example where the default behaviour is less desirable is the Rails TranslationHelper which provides the method +#t+ (as well as +#translate+). When a +MissingTranslationData+ exception occurs in this context, the helper wraps the message into a span with the CSS class +translation_missing+.
If you find anything missing or wrong in this guide please file a ticket on "our issue tracker":http://i18n.lighthouseapp.com/projects/14948-rails-i18n/overview. If you want to discuss certain portions or have questions please sign up to our "mailinglist":http://groups.google.com/group/rails-i18n.
I18n support in Ruby on Rails was introduced in the release 2.2 and is still evolving. The project follows the good Ruby on Rails development tradition of evolving solutions in plugins and real applications first, and only then cherry-picking the best-of-bread of most widely useful features for inclusion in the core.
Thus we encourage everybody to experiment with new ideas and features in plugins or other libraries and make them available to the community. (Don't forget to announce your work on our "mailing list":http://groups.google.com/group/rails-i18n!)
If you find your own locale (language) missing from our "example translations data":http://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n/tree/master/rails/locale repository for Ruby on Rails, please "_fork_":http://github.com/guides/fork-a-project-and-submit-your-modifications the repository, add your data and send a "pull request":http://github.com/guides/pull-requests.
h3. Resources
* "rails-i18n.org":http://rails-i18n.org - Homepage of the rails-i18n project. You can find lots of useful resources on the "wiki":http://rails-i18n.org/wiki.
* "rails-i18n Google group":http://groups.google.com/group/rails-i18n - The project's mailing list.
* "Github: rails-i18n":http://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n/tree/master - Code repository for the rails-i18n project. Most importantly you can find lots of "example translations":http://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n/tree/master/rails/locale for Rails that should work for your application in most cases.
* "Lighthouse: rails-i18n":http://i18n.lighthouseapp.com/projects/14948-rails-i18n/overview - Issue tracker for the rails-i18n project.
* "Github: i18n":http://github.com/svenfuchs/i18n/tree/master - Code repository for the i18n gem.
* "Lighthouse: i18n":http://i18n.lighthouseapp.com/projects/14947-ruby-i18n/overview - Issue tracker for the i18n gem.
If you found this guide useful please consider recommending its authors on "workingwithrails":http://www.workingwithrails.com.
h3. Footnotes
fn1. Or, to quote "Wikipedia":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization: _"Internationalization is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process of adapting software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text."_
fn2. Other backends might allow or require to use other formats, e.g. a GetText backend might allow to read GetText files.
fn3. One of these reasons is that we don't want to imply any unnecessary load for applications that do not need any I18n capabilities, so we need to keep the I18n library as simple as possible for English. Another reason is that it is virtually impossible to implement a one-fits-all solution for all problems related to I18n for all existing languages. So a solution that allows us to exchange the entire implementation easily is appropriate anyway. This also makes it much easier to experiment with custom features and extensions.
