This tool allows you to translate a locale folder containing multiple JSON files into multiple languages using Google Translate, DeepL (free/pro), Azure Translator, Amazon Translate, or manually. You can either use the translation keys (natural translation) or their values (key-based translation) as a source for translations.
If some of the strings have already been translated, they won't be translated again. This improves performance and ensures that you won't accidentally lose existing translations.
Interpolations (ICU: {name}, i18next: {{name}}, sprintf: %s) are replaced
by placeholders (e.g. <0 />) before being passed to the translation service,
so their structure doesn't get mangled by the translation.
$ yarn add json-autotranslate
# or
$ npm i -S json-autotranslate$ yarn json-autotranslate
# or
$ npx json-autotranslateTranslate natural language source files located in the locales directory using
Google Translate and delete existing keys in translated JSON files that are no
longer used.
$ yarn json-autotranslate -i locales -d -c service-account.jsonManually translate key-based source files located in the locales directory.
$ yarn json-autotranslate -i locales -s manualYou can specify your locales/i18n directory structure using the
--directory-structure option.
locales
├── de
├── en
│ ├── login.json
│ └── register.json
├── fr
└── it
If you don't specify another source language, this tool will translate all files
located in the en into all other languages that exist as directories. A single
language directory (e.g. en) should only contain JSON files. Sub-directories
and other files will be ignored.
i18n
├── de.json
├── en.json
├── fr.json
└── it.json
If you don't specify another source language, this tool will translate en.json
into all other languages that exist as files. The i18n directory should only
contain JSON files. Sub-directories and other files will be ignored.
There are two ways that json-autotranslate can interpret files:
- Natural Language (
natural) - Key-Based (
key-based)
If you don't specify a file structure type, json-autotranslate will automatically determine the type on a per-file basis. In most cases, this is sufficient.
This is the default way that this tool will interpret your source files. The
keys will be used as the basis of translations. If one or more of the values in
your source files don't match their respective key, you'll see a warning as this
could indicate an inconsistency in your translations. You can fix those
inconsistencies by passing the --fix-inconsistencies flag.
{
"Your username doesn't exist.": "Your username doesn't exist.",
"{email} is not a valid email address.": "{email} is not a valid email address."
}If you pass use the key-based option (--type key-based), this tool will use
the source file's values as the basis of translations. Keys can be nested, the
structure will be transferred over to the translated files as well.
{
"ERRORS": {
"USERNAME": "Your username doesn't exist.",
"EMAIL": "{email} is not a valid email address."
},
"LOGIN": "Login",
"FORGOT_PASSWORD": "Forgot password?"
}As of this release, json-autotranslate offers five services:
- google-translate (default, uses Google Translate to translate strings)
- deepl (uses DeepL Pro to translate strings)
- deepl-free (uses DeepL Free to translate strings)
- azure (uses Azure's Translator Text to translate strings)
- amazon-translate (uses Amazon Translate to translate strings)
- manual (allows you to translate strings manually by entering them into the CLI)
- dry-run (outputs a list of strings that will be translated without touching any files)
You can select a service using the -s or --service option. If you specify
the --list-services flag, json-autotranslate will output a list of all
available services.
To use this tool with Google Translate, you need to obtain valid credentials from Google. Follow these steps to get them:
- Select or create a Cloud Platform project
- Enable billing for your project (optional, I think)
- Enable the Google Cloud Translation API
- Set up authentication with a service account so you can access the API from your local workstation
You can specify the location of your downloaded JSON key file using the -c or
--config option.
To use this tool with DeepL, you need to obtain an API key from their website. If you don't have a Developer account yet, you can create one here.
DeepL Pro charges a fixed monthly price plus a variable fee for every 500 translated characters.
DeepL Free is limited to 500,000 characters translated per month.
After you have completed your sign-up, you can pass the API key to
json-autotranslate using the -c or --config option.
The value of the --config argument is a comma separated string with the
following: appKey,formality,batchSize.
The formality argument currently only works for target languages "DE"
(German), "FR" (French), "IT" (Italian), "ES" (Spanish), "NL" (Dutch), "PL"
(Polish), "PT-PT", "PT-BR" (Portuguese) and "RU" (Russian). Possible options
are:
- "default" (default)
- "more" - for a more formal language
- "less" - for a more informal language
To improve performance and prevent DeepL rate-limiting json-autotranslate
batches multiple tokens into a single translation request. By default, the
batchSize is set to 1000, meaning that 1000 tokens are translated at once.
This can be controlled by adjusting the value in the --config parameter. This
value was chosen because the DeepL prevents the body of a request to be larger
than `128 KiB (128 · 1024 bytes)``. Based on experimentation, even with long
tokens, this limit is not reached.
To use this tool with Azure's Translator Text, you need to obtain an API key
from their website. Sign Up for an
Azure account if you don't have one already and
create a new translator instance.
You'll get an API key soon after that which you can pass to json-autotranslate
using the -c or --config flag.
Unless you configure a global translator instance you will need to provide a
region by adding it to the config string after the API key, separated by a
comma: --config apiKey,region. As of this version, the following regions are
available:
australiaeast, brazilsouth, canadacentral, centralindia, centralus, centraluseuap, eastasia, eastus, eastus2, francecentral, japaneast, japanwest, koreacentral, northcentralus, northeurope, southcentralus, southeastasia, uksouth, westcentralus, westeurope, westus, westus2, and southafricanorth
As of now, the first 2M characters of translation per month are free. After that you'll have to pay $10 per 1M characters that you translate. See their pricing
- Create an AWS account
- Create an IAM user with the permissions required for Amazon Translate. A policy file like the following should work:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Sid": "VisualEditor0",
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"comprehend:DetectDominantLanguage",
"translate:TranslateText"
],
"Resource": "*"
}
]
}
- Configure your AWS user credentials locally, or wherever you will be running json-autotranslate. There are many ways to do this, but it is best to use something like shared credentials. Hard coded credentials should not be used for anything beyond proof of concept.
- Create a json configuration file that defines the AWS region you want to use Translate in.
You can provide a path to the json configuration file via the --config flag.
You may define any properties from
TranslateClientConfig
and they will be passed as the first argument to the
Translate Constructor.
At a minimum, this must include the AWS region.
Amazon Translate offers a free tier, but is paid after that. See their pricing page for details.
This service doesn't require any configuration. You will be prompted to translate the source strings manually in the console.
Matchers are used to replace interpolations with placeholders before they are sent to the translation service. This ensures that interpolations don't get scrambled in the process. As of this release, json-autotranslate offers four matchers for different styles of interpolation:
- icu (default, matches ICU MessageFormat interpolations)
- i18next (matches i18next interpolations)
- sprintf (matches sprintf-style interpolations like
%s) - none (doesn't match any interpolations)
You can select a matchers using the -m or --matcher option. If you specify
the --list-matchers flag, json-autotranslate will output a list of all
available matchers.
Options:
-i, --input <inputDir> the directory containing language directories (default: ".")
--cache <cacheDir> set the cache directory (default: ".json-autotranslate-cache")
-l, --source-language <sourceLang> specify the source language (default: "en")
-t, --type <key-based|natural|auto> specify the file structure type (default: "auto")
-a, --with-arrays enables support for arrays in files, but removes support for keys named 0, 1, 2, etc.
-s, --service <service> selects the service to be used for translation (default: "google-translate")
-g, --glossaries [glossariesDir] set the glossaries folder to be used by DeepL. Keep empty for automatic determination of matching glossary
-a, --appName <appName> specify the name of your app to distinguish DeepL glossaries (if sharing an API key between multiple projects) (default: "json-autotranslate")
--context <context> set the context that is used by DeepL for translations
--list-services outputs a list of available services
-m, --matcher <matcher> selects the matcher to be used for interpolations (default: "icu")
--list-matchers outputs a list of available matchers
-c, --config <value> supply a config parameter (e.g. path to key file) to the translation service
-f, --fix-inconsistencies automatically fixes inconsistent key-value pairs by setting the value to the key
-d, --delete-unused-strings deletes strings in translation files that don't exist in the template
--directory-structure <default|ngx-translate> the locale directory structure
--decode-escapes decodes escaped HTML entities like ' into normal UTF-8 characters
-h, --help display help for command
If you'd like to contribute to this project, please feel free to open a pull request.
