dfx-translate

dfx-translate

A simple translation package for Angular 4 - 12.

Features

• inline html translations with pipelines
• in-code translation with services
• an easy-to-use json structure
• auto-translation feature via LibreTranslate API integration

Information

• Supported languages for auto-translation
• Development notes
• Deployment notes
• Project website
• created with Angular , used libraries

Setup

Installation

npm install dfx-translate@latest

Language file setup

Language files must be saved in src/assets/i18n/LANGUAGE_CODE.json; Create the directory if it does not exist.

mkdir -p ./src/assets/i18n

Choose a primary language, lets say you've picked english. Create an en.json file with following content:

{
  "WELCOME": "Welcome",
  "WELCOME_SUBTEXT": "stranger."
}

Note: The json structure must always consist of a key and value pair.

Manual translation

Choose an additional language, lets say you've picked german. Create an de.json file

{
  "WELCOME": "Willkomen",
  "WELCOME_SUBTEXT": "Fremder."
}

Note: You do not have to translate all strings if you are using the auto-translate feature.

Auto translation

dfx-translate can translate the primary language into a whole new language and will take partially manual translated languages into account, meaning it will only translate strings which are not occurring in the manual created files located at src/assets/i18n/LANGUAGE_CODE.json.

Read more

Registration in root (app) module

This has to be done only once in the project. Ideal in app.module.ts

import {DfxTranslateModule} from "dfx-translate";

@NgModule({
  declarations: [...],
  imports: [
    ...
      DfxTranslateModule.setup({
        configuration: {
          defaultLanguage: 'de',
          useLocalStorage: false
        }
      })
  ],
  bootstrap: [...]
})
export class AppModule {
}

property	description	default value
defaultLanguage	Short code of the primary language (identically to the file name)	en
useLocalStorage	Saves selected languages as the preference into local storage	true

Registration in feature module

import {DfxTranslateModule} from "dfx-translate";

@NgModule({
  declarations: [...],
  imports: [
    ...
      DfxTranslateModule,
  ],
})
export class FeatureModule {
}

Usage

Switching languages

Language switching is as easy as one function call.

Note: The language code used has to exist as src/assets/i18n/LANGUAGE_CODE.json

import {TranslateService} from "dfx-translate";

@Component({
  selector: 'app-example',
  templateUrl: ...,
  styleUrls: [...],
})
export class ExampleComponent {
  constructor(private translator: TranslateService) {
  }

  setLang(lang: string) {
    this.translator.use(lang);
  }
}

Pipeline usage

Import DfxTranslateModule into the module requiring the translation pipe.

import {DfxTranslateModule} from "dfx-translate";

@NgModule({
  declarations: [...],
  imports: [
    ...
      DfxTranslateModule,
    ...
  ],
  exports: [...]
})
export class ExampleModule {
}

Now you can use it with tr in html

<h1>{{'WELCOME' | tr}}</h1>
<span>{{'WELCOME_SUBTEXT' | tr}}</span>

Service usage

Access translations via code with TranslateService

import {TranslateService} from "dfx-translate";

@Component({
  selector: 'app-example',
  templateUrl: ...,
  styleUrls: [...],
})
export class ExampleComponent {
  constructor(private translator: TranslateService) {
  }

  save() {
    window.alert(this.translator.translate('WELCOME'));
  }
}

Auto deep learning translation

It's possible to translate not manual translated strings via LibreTranslate API. LibreTranslate is an open-source, self-hostable machine-translation service.

dfx-translate can translate the primary language into a whole new language and will take partially manual translated languages into account, meaning it will only translate strings which are not occurring in the manual created files located at src/assets/i18n/LANGUAGE_CODE.json.

Command syntax:

node ./node_modules/dfx-translate/translation/generateTranslation.js {API_URL} {SOURCE_LANGUAGE_CODE} {TARGET_LANGUAGE_CODE}

Note: You never have to auto-translate fully manual translated files

Supported languages

LANGUAGE_CODE	name
en	English
ar	Arabic
zh	Chinese
fr	French
de	German
hi	Hindi
ga	Irish
it	Italian
ja	Japanese
ko	Korean
pt	Portuguese
ru	Russian
es	Spanish

Note: Keep in mind that at least one of the fully manual translated files has to be in such a language for this feature to work.

Example

• Primary language: en; Fully translated language: de; Partially translated language: es; Not translated language: fr

  node ./node_modules/dfx-translate/translation/generateTranslation.js https://translate.abc.abc/translate en es
  node ./node_modules/dfx-translate/translation/generateTranslation.js https://translate.abc.abc/translate en fr
  

  Following files should be in src/assets/i18n/ folder.
  • en.json - the primary language
  • de.json - additional language, fully manual translated
  • es.json - additional language, partially manual translated
  • es_auto.json - additional language, auto-translated missing strings of es.json compared to the primary language
  • fr_auto.json - additional language, completely auto-translated containing all translations

Simplifying

For simplicity purposes I wrote a little shell script. Put this at the top / root level of the project

#!/usr/bin/env bash
main () {
 node ./node_modules/dfx-translate/translation/generateTranslation.js https://translate.abc.abc/translate en de
 node ./node_modules/dfx-translate/translation/generateTranslation.js https://translate.abc.abc/translate en fr
 node ./node_modules/dfx-translate/translation/generateTranslation.js https://translate.abc.abc/translate en es
 node ./node_modules/dfx-translate/translation/generateTranslation.js https://translate.abc.abc/translate en it
 node ./node_modules/dfx-translate/translation/generateTranslation.js https://translate.abc.abc/translate en pt

 # If you have any prettier library intstalled, execute it here
 # prettier --config ./.prettierrc --write ./src/assets/i18n

 printf "\nFinished!"
}
time main

Now you only have to run this script.

Development

Everything important in this library is located in projects/dfx-translate, that's the "real" library. (following commands still have to be executed at the root level)

Dependency installation

npm install

Starting in development environment

npm run-script watch

Building a production version

npm run-script build

Deployment notes

dfx-translate deployments are managed via .gitlab-ci

All builds are uploaded to releases.datepoll.org/common/dfx-translate

Development builds

Commits to the development branch create a dev build downloadable via this link.

Production builds

Tags create a release build downloadable via this link. Additionally, a versioned zip is uploaded and the package is published to npm.