multilingual-cli

🌐 Multilingual CLI v2.0

Automated i18n with FREE translation options — 15+ translation methods (12 free!), 37 languages, offline mode, multiple export formats, and more.

✨ What's New in v2.0

• 🆓 12 Free Translation Methods — No billing required!
• 📂 Offline Translation — Built-in dictionaries, no internet needed
• 🎨 Creative Modes — Pig Latin, Emoji, L33t, Morse Code, NATO phonetic
• 📊 Statistics & Cost Estimation — Plan before you translate
• 📦 Multiple Export Formats — XLIFF, PO/gettext, CSV, Android, iOS, ARB
• 👀 Watch Mode — Auto-translate during development
• 🧪 Pseudo-localization — Test UI with fake translations
• 💾 Translation Memory — Reuse translations with fuzzy matching
• 🔒 Enhanced Security — API keys never exposed in logs

🚀 Quick Start

# Install globally
npm install -g multilingual-cli

# Initialize in your project
multilingual init

# Or use directly with npx
npx multilingual-cli init

📋 Translation Services

🆓 FREE Online (No Billing Required)

Service	Description	Limit
MyMemory	Crowd-sourced + machine translation (recommended)	10k chars/day (100k with email)
LibreTranslate	Open source, self-hostable	Unlimited
Lingva	Privacy-focused (may be blocked by Cloudflare)	Unlimited

📂 Offline (No Internet Required)

Service	Description	Use Case
Dictionary	Built-in dictionaries for 10 languages	Quick translations, no API
Local	Use your own JSON translation files	Custom terminology

🎨 Creative & Testing (Instant)

Service	Description	Example
Pseudo	Fake translations with accents	[Ḥḛŀŀő Ẇőřŀḓ~~~]
Piglatin	Classic word game	ellohay orldway
Emoji	Words → emojis	👋 🌍
Leet	L33t sp34k	h3ll0 w0rld
Reverse	Reversed text	dlrow olleh
Mirror	Unicode mirror chars	ꓭ⅃ꓤOW O⅃⅃ƎH
Morse	Morse code	.... . .-.. .-.. ---
NATO	NATO phonetic alphabet	Hotel Echo Lima Lima Oscar
Uppercase	ALL CAPS	HELLO WORLD

💳 Paid (Free Tier Available)

Service	Description	Free Tier
DeepL	High quality neural translation	500k chars/month
Google	Wide language support	500k chars/month

# Use free Lingva (recommended, no API key needed!)
multilingual translate-file -s en.json -o ./locales --service lingva

# Use offline dictionary (no internet required!)
multilingual translate-file -s en.json -o ./locales --service dictionary

# Fun: translate to Pig Latin
multilingual translate-file -s en.json -o ./locales --service piglatin

# View all service options
multilingual services

🛠️ CLI Commands

Core Commands

multilingual init              # Interactive setup wizard
multilingual run               # Scan & translate project
multilingual scan              # Scan only, show strings
multilingual translate-file    # Translate existing JSON file

Export & Import

# Export to XLIFF for translation tools
multilingual export -i en.json -o translations.xliff -f xliff

# Import translated XLIFF
multilingual import -i translated.xliff -o fr.json

# Supported formats: xliff, xliff2, po, csv, android, ios, arb

Development Tools

multilingual watch             # Auto-translate on file changes
multilingual pseudo -s en.json # Generate pseudo-translations
multilingual stats             # View statistics & cost estimates

Configuration

multilingual config --show     # View current config
multilingual config --edit     # Interactive config editor
multilingual config --set key=value
multilingual services          # List all translation services
multilingual languages         # List all 37 supported languages

🌍 Supported Languages (37)

🇺🇸 English	🇪🇸 Spanish	🇫🇷 French	🇩🇪 German
🇮🇹 Italian	🇵🇹 Portuguese	🇧🇷 Portuguese (BR)	🇷🇺 Russian
🇨🇳 Chinese (Simplified)	🇹🇼 Chinese (Traditional)	🇯🇵 Japanese	🇰🇷 Korean
🇸🇦 Arabic (RTL)	🇮🇳 Hindi	🇳🇱 Dutch	🇵🇱 Polish
🇸🇪 Swedish	🇩🇰 Danish	🇫🇮 Finnish	🇳🇴 Norwegian
🇹🇷 Turkish	🇨🇿 Czech	🇬🇷 Greek	🇮🇱 Hebrew (RTL)
🇭🇺 Hungarian	🇮🇩 Indonesian	🇲🇾 Malay	🇹🇭 Thai
🇻🇳 Vietnamese	🇺🇦 Ukrainian	🇧🇬 Bulgarian	🇷🇴 Romanian
🇸🇰 Slovak	🇸🇮 Slovenian	🇪🇪 Estonian	🇱🇻 Latvian
🇱🇹 Lithuanian

📦 Export Formats

Supported Formats

Format	Extension	Use Case
JSON	.json	Web apps, Node.js
XLIFF 1.2	.xliff	Translation tools (SDL, Trados)
XLIFF 2.0	.xliff	Modern CAT tools
PO/gettext	.po	Linux, WordPress, Python
CSV	.csv	Spreadsheets, bulk editing
Android	strings.xml	Android apps
iOS	.strings	iOS/macOS apps
ARB	.arb	Flutter apps

# Convert JSON to XLIFF for professional translators
multilingual export -i en.json -o translations.xliff -f xliff

# Import back from translated XLIFF
multilingual import -i es.xliff -o es.json

🧪 Pseudo-localization

Test your UI's i18n readiness with fake translations:

# Generate pseudo-translations
multilingual pseudo -s en.json -o pseudo.json

Before: "Hello World" After: "[Ḥḛŀŀő Ẇőřŀḓ~~~]"

This helps you:

• ✅ Find hardcoded strings
• ✅ Test text expansion (~30% longer)
• ✅ Verify special character support
• ✅ Identify concatenated strings

📊 Statistics & Cost Estimation

multilingual stats --report

╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║              Translation Statistics Report                    ║
╠══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣

📊 SUMMARY
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Total strings:    245
  Total words:      1,847
  Total characters: 12,456
  Overall coverage: 78.3%

🌍 LANGUAGE COVERAGE
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  ✅ Spanish              [████████████████████] 100.0%
  🔄 French               [██████████████░░░░░░] 72.3%
  ⏳ German               [████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░] 23.1%

💰 COST ESTIMATES
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  DeepL Free tier: ~0.4 months of quota
  Google Free tier: ~0.4 months of quota
  ✅ Within free tier limits for both services

🔄 GitHub Actions Automation

multilingual github --setup

Automatically translate on every push:

# .github/workflows/translate.yml
name: Auto-translate
on:
  push:
    paths:
      - 'src/**'
      - 'locales/en.json'

jobs:
  translate:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
      - run: npm install -g multilingual-cli
      - run: multilingual run --auto
        env:
          TRANSLATION_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.TRANSLATION_API_KEY }}
      - uses: stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action@v5
        with:
          commit_message: 'chore: update translations'

💻 Programmatic Usage

import Multilingual, { 
  TranslationManager, 
  calculateStats,
  exportToFile,
  XLIFFFormat 
} from 'multilingual-cli';

// Basic usage
const ml = new Multilingual({
  config: {
    sourceLanguage: 'en',
    targetLanguages: ['es', 'fr', 'de'],
    translationService: 'none', // Use free service instead
  }
});

// Use free translation service
const manager = new TranslationManager();
manager.setExtendedService('libretranslate'); // No API key needed!

const result = await manager.translate('Hello World', 'es', 'en');
console.log(result.text); // "Hola Mundo"

// Pseudo-translation for testing
const pseudo = manager.generatePseudoTranslation('Hello World');
console.log(pseudo); // "[Ḥḛŀŀő Ẇőřŀḓ~~~]"

// Export to XLIFF
const doc = {
  sourceLanguage: 'en',
  targetLanguage: 'es',
  units: [
    { key: 'greeting', source: 'Hello', target: 'Hola' },
    { key: 'farewell', source: 'Goodbye', target: 'Adiós' },
  ]
};
const xliff = XLIFFFormat.export(doc);

🔒 Security

API keys are never exposed:

• ✅ Keys masked in logs (AIza****...****V8Isd3A)
• ✅ Uses environment variables
• ✅ .env.example template included
• ✅ Keys never written to translation files
• ✅ Error messages sanitized

# Use environment variable
export TRANSLATION_API_KEY="your-key-here"
multilingual run --auto

📁 Project Structure

your-project/
├── locales/
│   ├── en.json        # Source language
│   ├── es.json        # Auto-generated
│   ├── fr.json        # Auto-generated
│   └── ...
├── .multilingual/
│   ├── translation-memory.json  # Reusable translations
│   └── reports/                 # Statistics reports
├── multilingual.config.json     # Configuration
└── .env                         # API keys (git-ignored)

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read our contributing guidelines first.

• Fork the repository
• Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
• Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
• Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
• Open a Pull Request

📄 License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

Attribution Required: Generated translation files must retain the multilingual-cli attribution comments.

🔗 Links

• npm: npmjs.com/package/multilingual-cli
• GitHub: github.com/NagusameCS/Multilingual
• Documentation: NagusameCS.github.io/Multilingual

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