It seems like the current status quo of ~internationalization has several pitfalls, which have an influence on the quality of the translations, the translatability of GitLab, impact the build processes and/or day to day development. ## Current process The current workflow is like this: 1. A developer marks a certain string for [externalization](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/i18n/externalization.html) 2. This String is extracted by [gettext_i18n_rails] (with the help of [gettext-extractor-vue] 3. All Strings are saved in a [pot file](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettext) 4. This pot file is uploaded into our crowd translation service [crowdin](https://crowdin.com/translate/gitlab-ee/) 5. Our translators translate the Strings into their respective languages 6. We (manually) download the translated po files from and [merge them](https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/development/i18n/merging_translations.html) 7. During usage of the application [gettext_i18n_rails] provides the translated strings to the backend, [gettext_i18n_rails_js] and [Jed] to the frontend. [gettext_i18n_rails]: https://github.com/grosser/gettext_i18n_rails [gettext_i18n_rails_js]: https://github.com/webhippie/gettext_i18n_rails_js [gettext-extractor-vue]: https://gitlab.com/leipert-projects/gettext-extractor-vue [Jed]: https://messageformat.github.io/Jed/ ## Improving the current situation The status quo has several issues we can improve. Those fall into different categories: ### Process improvements - The current process involves a lot of manual steps, streamlining the process could help a lot https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/39309 - Crowdin has a proper API, translations that are invalid could automatically be marked as invalid https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/49208 - The automatic CE->EE merges are breaking master: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/55379 - Externalized strings should be checked for validity https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/52989 - Merges should happen per language (once automated) in order to reduce side-effects: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/43744 - CE unnecessarily ships EE translations: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/56648 ### Improvements in the FE flow - Frontend is not able to use components within translated sentences: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/43777 - This will be addressed with gitlab-ui!1014 - Apparently our Vue.use(Translate) could be dried out: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/54359 - The frontend ships all translations ATM, not only the ones it needs: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/56647 ### Improvements in the BE flow - [gettext_i18n_rails] is heavily intertwined with the application and extracting the externalized strings is very expensive: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/56652 (reference 55379) - Some gems use config/locales/*.yml instead of crowdin (our workflow): https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/52814 - Ruby/HAML: Extract externalized strings from AST: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/56652 ### Improvements in documentation / translatability - It seems like we should provide our translators with guidelines whether and how to translate technical https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/9022 / https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/38419 - Think of a way to let people provide feedback on translations from within the product (See https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/48839) - How do we deal with languages that have multiple plurals https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/43743 - We have no process to add new languages in place: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/43302 - Timeago cannot be pluralized properly: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/42523 - we do not have the ability to use proper contexts in our translations: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/40347 - Externalization between FE and BE have a different API: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/38205 / https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/48110 - It's easy to miss that something cannot be translated, we should make it more visible which strings are not translated yet https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/54430 / https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/37849 - Crowdin has a an overlay feature, which we could use to make inline translations: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/56626