Internationalization

[AndreM222]

Hello,

First of all great plugin, I love using it.

Second:
I want to introduce internationalization to various plugins, more specifically in the UI area.

Story

As I was studying japanese I wanted to translate my own dotfiles which I did succesfuly, but many other people used my setup as well so I added internationalization in my own dotfile. But as I was studying japanese I saw many people who used neovim which couldnt fully understand english. So this gave me the idea and resolution to go to the plugins and add internationalization capabilities.

Benefits:

1. Everyone can understand and have it in their desired language.
2. More people can contribute and add their own translations.

Approach

My approach is as follows

To get the language set I am using a variable build in which Is

vim.v.lang

Once I get the language it changes the values depending on the languages available and translations.
For me I used a function that when text goes inside It tries to look for an available translation. if it doesnt have then it returns default string.

To load translation I developed this:

-- Current Language
local lang = string.sub(vim.v.lang, 1, 2)
local po_path = vim.fn.stdpath('config') .. "/lua/andrem222/po/" .. lang .. ".po"

-- Translation table
local translatedTable = {}

-- Basic PO file parser
local function parse_po(path)
    local file = io.open(path, "r")
    if not file then return {} end

    local translations = {}
    local mode = nil
    local current_msgid = {}
    local current_msgstr = {}

    local function unescape(str)
        return str:gsub('\\"', '"'):gsub("\\n", "\n")
    end

    for line in file:lines() do
        if line:match('^msgid%s+"') then
            mode = "msgid"
            current_msgid = { line:match('^msgid%s+"(.*)"') }
            current_msgstr = {}
        elseif line:match('^msgstr%s+"') then
            mode = "msgstr"
            current_msgstr = { line:match('^msgstr%s+"(.*)"') }
        elseif line:match('^"') then
            local str = line:match('^"(.*)"')
            if mode == "msgid" then
                table.insert(current_msgid, str)
            elseif mode == "msgstr" then
                table.insert(current_msgstr, str)
            end
        elseif line == "" then
            -- End of one entry
            if #current_msgid > 0 and #current_msgstr > 0 then
                local msgid_text = unescape(table.concat(current_msgid))
                local msgstr_text = unescape(table.concat(current_msgstr))
                translations[msgid_text] = msgstr_text
            end
            mode = nil
            current_msgid = {}
            current_msgstr = {}
        end
    end

    -- Handle the last entry if file doesn't end with blank line
    if #current_msgid > 0 and #current_msgstr > 0 then
        local msgid_text = unescape(table.concat(current_msgid))
        local msgstr_text = unescape(table.concat(current_msgstr))
        translations[msgid_text] = msgstr_text
    end

    file:close()
    return translations
end

-- Load translations
translatedTable = parse_po(po_path)

--- This function returns the translation if available and not empty
--- @param description string Description to translate
--- @param values string[]? Optional list of variables
--- @return string
function Msgstr(description, values)
    local translated = translatedTable[description]
    if not translated or translated == "" then
        translated = description
    end

    if values then
        local unpack = table.unpack or unpack

        local ok, formatted = pcall(string.format, translated, unpack(values))
        if ok then
            translated = formatted
        end
    end

    return translated
end

But to make all the PO's I made this cmake code

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.31.6)
project(Internationalization)

set(NVIM_DIR "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/../../..")
set(TRANSLATION_DIR "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}")
set(TEMPLATE_FILE "${TRANSLATION_DIR}/template.pot")
set(TRANSLATION_SCRIPT_TYPE "po")

set(LANGUAGES en ja)

file(MAKE_DIRECTORY ${TRANSLATION_DIR})
file(GLOB_RECURSE LUA_FILES "${NVIM_DIR}/*.lua")

add_custom_command(
    OUTPUT ${TEMPLATE_FILE}
    DEPENDS ${LUA_FILES}
    COMMAND bash -c "mkdir -p '${TRANSLATION_DIR}' && cd '${NVIM_DIR}' && xgettext -L Lua --keyword=Msgstr --directory=. -o '${TEMPLATE_FILE}' $(find . -name '*.lua')"
    COMMENT "Generating template.pot from Lua source"
    VERBATIM
)

foreach(LANGUAGE ${LANGUAGES})
    set(PO_FILE "${TRANSLATION_DIR}/${LANGUAGE}.${TRANSLATION_SCRIPT_TYPE}")

    add_custom_command(
        OUTPUT ${PO_FILE}
        DEPENDS ${TEMPLATE_FILE}
        COMMAND bash -c "if [ -f '${PO_FILE}' ]; then msgmerge --update --backup=off '${PO_FILE}' '${TEMPLATE_FILE}'; else cp '${TEMPLATE_FILE}' '${PO_FILE}' && sed -i '' -e 's/charset=CHARSET/charset=UTF-8/' -e 's/^\\\"Language:.*\\\"$/\\\"Language: ${LANGUAGE}\\\\n\\\"/' '${PO_FILE}'; fi"
        COMMENT "Merging or creating ${LANGUAGE}.po"
        VERBATIM
    )

    add_custom_target(${LANGUAGE}_po ALL DEPENDS ${PO_FILE})
endforeach()

add_custom_target(update_translations ALL
    DEPENDS ${TEMPLATE_FILE}
)

If you are interested I will like to implement this here. Not everyone who uses neovim is proficient in english, and I want to make it possible for everyone to enjoy the popular plugins in their own language, including this one. I know english and spanish, and I know some level of japanese to translate a good amount of stuff.

Here is a preview.

This is a preview of it working. the lualine and telescope I managed to grab their texts to replace them with what I wanted.

For example the telescope one looks like this.

                    live_grep = {
                        prompt_title = Msgstr("Live Grep"),
                        results_title = Msgstr("Results"),
                        preview_title = Msgstr("Grep Preview")
                    },

it made two PO

which the japanese one looks as follows,

#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:170 lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:176
#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:182 lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:188
#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:194 lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:199
#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:205
msgid "Results"
msgstr "結果"

#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:171 lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:177
#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:183 lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:200
#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:206
msgid "Grep Preview"
msgstr "グレッププレビュー"

#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:175
msgid "Buffers"
msgstr "ブッファ"

#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:181
msgid "Workspace Diagnostics"
msgstr "ワークスペース診断"

#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:187 lua/andrem222/plugins/ui.lua:307
msgid "Help"
msgstr "ヘルプ"

#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:189
msgid "Help Preview"
msgstr "ヘルププレビュー"

#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:193 lua/andrem222/plugins/ui.lua:180
msgid "Keymaps"
msgstr "キーマップ"

#: lua/andrem222/plugins/tools.lua:198
msgid "Live Grep"
msgstr "ライブGrep"

[AndreM222]

I can start implementation if you like the idea.