@divine/localization
Advanced tools
Localization and translations should be code, not data.
As developers, we want our languages to be expressive, elegant and concise, so that we may express complex thoughts effortlessly and clearly to both the machine and readers of our code. We want first-class editor support for syntax highlighting, code completions and validation.
Yet, when it comes to building something as complex as natural language sentences, we are supposed to make do with just plain strings, a switch/case construct and some fixed plural function like it's still the 80's. No typed arguments, no syntax validation or highlighting, no lookup-tables, custom functions or dictionaries, no tooling for finding out where a particular translation is used by the program, or if it's even used at all.
Additionally, in web applications in particular, you may sometimes want to translate rich-text/markup and not just plain text. No can do. So now the application has to know if a particular sentence should be HTML-encoded or not, with no way to enforce that all translations match — and prepare to get p0wned if you forget to encode a parameter.
This TypeScript library is really more dogma than code. In fact, it currently only exposes a single function! However:
export const EN = {
intro: {
title: 'Introduction',
descr: () => `The "${C.title}" chapter`,
about: (who: Person) => `About ${who.name}`,
loves: (who: Person, what: Item, count: number) =>
<>The gentle {who.name} <i>loves</i> {EN_PRONOUNS[who.gender]} little {EN_PLURAL(what, count)}.</>
},
}
export const C = translated.current(EN);
...
export const ES: Translation<typeof EN> = {
intro: {
title: `Introducción`,
loves: ({ name, gender }, what, count) =>
<>
{gender !== 'f' ? 'El buen' : 'La buena'} {name} <i>ama</i> {count === 1 ? 'su' : 'sus'} {
ES_ADJ(ES_ITEMS[what].g, count, 'pequeño', 'pequeña', 'pequeños', 'pequeñas')} {
ES_ITEMS[what][count === 1 ? 's' : 'p']}
</>
}
}
...
const { intro } = translated(EN, ES) as typeof EN;
const html = <body>
<h1>{ intro.title }</h1>
<h2>{ intro.descr() }</h2>
<h3>{ intro.about(params.who) }</h3>
<p>{ intro.loves(params.who, params.what, params.count) }</p>
</body>
Check out the fully interactive Playground example to better understand how it works. Make some mistakes and see what happens!
These ideas are not new. I found the 20 year old Maketext article, shared by m0llusk on Hacker News, particularly intriguing. A must read!
FAQs
The Divine Localization Library
The npm package @divine/localization receives a total of 7 weekly downloads. As such, @divine/localization popularity was classified as not popular.
We found that @divine/localization demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
Did you know?
Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.
Security News
Ransomware payment rates hit an all-time low in 2024 as law enforcement crackdowns, stronger defenses, and shifting policies make attacks riskier and less profitable.
Security News
require(esm) backported to Node.js 20, easing the transition to ESM-only packages and reducing complexity for developers as Node 18 nears end-of-life.
Security News
PyPI now supports iOS and Android wheels, making it easier for Python developers to distribute mobile packages.