Translation export generates msgctxt / plural entries that Godot runtime cannot resolve

[elasrlambert]

Description

Hi, first of all thank you for the Quest System plugin — it’s very helpful.

While using the built-in translation export with Godot 4.5, I ran into an issue where quest-related translations are correctly generated into .po files, but cannot be resolved at runtime using tr(), even though the keys match exactly.

After debugging, I found that this is caused by how EditorTranslationParserPlugin is currently used in the plugin.

Root Cause Analysis

In EditorTranslationParserPlugin._parse_file(), the plugin returns a PackedStringArray with three elements per property:

msgids.append("quest_%s/%s" % [res.id, property.name])
msgids.append("Quest ID: %s, property: %s" % [res.id, property.name])
msgids.append("quest_%s/%s_plural" % [res.id, property.name])

However, in Godot’s translation pipeline:

• PackedStringArray[0] → msgid
• PackedStringArray[1] → msgctxt
• PackedStringArray[2] → msgid_plural

This causes Godot to automatically generate .po entries like:

msgctxt "Quest ID: 1, property: quest_description"
msgid "quest_1/quest_description"
msgid_plural "quest_1/quest_description_plural"
msgstr[0] ""

Problem

Godot runtime (TranslationServer) does not support:

• msgctxt
• msgid_plural
• msgstr[n]

As a result, any entry generated this way is silently ignored at runtime, and tr("quest_1/quest_description") simply returns the key.

My fixed version:
translation_plugin.gd

## plugin version:
#func Wrong_parse_file(path: String) -> Array[PackedStringArray]:
	#var res := ResourceLoader.load(path)
	#if not res: return []
	#if not res is Quest: return []
#
	#var ret: Array[PackedStringArray] = []
	#for property in res.get_script().get_script_property_list():
		#var msgids: PackedStringArray = []
		#if property.type != 4: continue # If the property is not a string, we skip it
#
		## Here we check if the property is an exported variable
		#if property.usage == PROPERTY_USAGE_SCRIPT_VARIABLE | PROPERTY_USAGE_STORAGE | PROPERTY_USAGE_EDITOR:
			#msgids.append("quest_%s/%s"% [res.id, property.name]) # quest_1/quest_name
			#msgids.append("Quest ID: %s, property: %s"% [res.id, property.name]) # quest_1/quest_objective
			#msgids.append("quest_%s/%s_plural"% [res.id, property.name]) # quest_1/quest_description
#
			#ret.append(msgids)
#
	#return ret
	
## My version:
func _parse_file(path: String) -> Array[PackedStringArray]:
	var res := ResourceLoader.load(path)
	if not res or not res is Quest:
		return []

	var ret: Array[PackedStringArray] = []

	for property in res.get_script().get_script_property_list():
		if property.type != TYPE_STRING:
			continue

		if property.usage == PROPERTY_USAGE_SCRIPT_VARIABLE | PROPERTY_USAGE_STORAGE | PROPERTY_USAGE_EDITOR:
			var msgids := PackedStringArray()
			msgids.append("quest_%s/%s" % [res.id, property.name])
			ret.append(msgids)

	return ret

Information

• Version of Godot affected: 4.5.1.stable
• Version of QuestSystem: 2.0.1

[shomykohai]

Hi, thanks for the report.

Something is odd about this.
According to godot documentation

The return value should be an Array of PackedStringArrays, one for each extracted translatable string. Each entry should contain [msgid, msgctxt, msgid_plural, comment], where all except msgid are optional. Empty strings will be ignored.

So it should work as is right now, but I'll check just to be sure.
Are you able to provide a minimal reproducible project? So that I can debug this more easily