Localization

Commerce translations enable you to customize and localize your store for multiple regions and markets by generating:

See Translations overview.

Generate a translation dictionary

You can generate a translation dictionary to customize existing strings, translate words and phrases in a custom module, localize a theme, or create language packages.

To begin translating, use a command to generate a dictionary CSV file with a collected list of all existing phrases and words.

To generate the dictionary and begin translation:

Command options:

bin/magento i18n:collect-phrases [-o|--output="<csv file path and name>"] [-m|--magento] <path to directory to translate>

The following table explains parameters and values:

Translation guidelines

Use the following guidelines when translating words and phrases:

Commerce uses the placeholders to insert context values; they are not used for translations. For example:

Product '%1' has been added to shopping cart.

Populates with a value:

Product 'Multimeter-2000' has been added to shopping cart.

The resulting phrase must contain at least one of each placeholder. For example, suppose that there are placeholders from %1 to %3 in the original phrase. The translation can have as many of these placeholders in any order, but there must be at least one occurrence of %1, %2, and %3. The translation cannot contain placeholder values not present in the original value (for example, %4, %5, and so on).

An example of translating a phrase:

"Buy %1 for %2 (%3 incl. tax) each","Compre %1 por %2 (%3 incl. imposto) cada"

Create a language package

As opposed to a translation dictionary, you can translate any or all words and phrases in the Commerce application using a language package. You can translate a particular component—like a module or a theme—using a translation dictionary. Learn more about language packages.

This section discusses how to create a language package, which writes CSV files to modules and themes. To create a language package, you must perform the tasks discussed in the following sections:

Run the language package command

Command usage:

bin/magento i18n:pack [-m|--mode={merge|replace}] [-d|--allow-duplicates] <source> <locale>

The following table explains the parameters and values for the language package command:

Create directories and files

Language packages are located in a directory under app/i18n/<VendorName> in the Commerce file system with the following contents:

To create these files:

Language package language.xml

When declaring a language package in the language.xml configuration file, you must specify the sequence of the language inheritance for this package.

Language inheritance enables you to create a translation called a child based on an existing translation called a parent. The child translations override the parent. However, if the child translation fails to upload or display or is missing a phrase or word, Commerce uses the parent locale. Examples of language package inheritance.

To declare a package, specify the following information:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<language xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:App/Language/package.xsd">
    <code>en_GB</code>
    <vendor>magento</vendor>
    <package>en_gb</package>
    <sort_order>100</sort_order>
    <use vendor="oxford-university" package="en_us"/>
</language>

Where:

If necessary, you can specify several parent packages. The parent packages are applied on a first listed, first used basis.

Example of language inheritance

Suppose that a language package inherits from two other packages, and that those packages also have parent and “grandparent” packages.

If a language package inherits from two packages, its language.xml might look like the following:

<language xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:App/Language/package.xsd">
    <code>en_GB</code>
    <vendor>magento</vendor>
    <package>language_pack</package>
    <sort_order>100</sort_order>
    <use vendor="parent-package-one" package="language_package_one"/>
    <use vendor= "parent-package-two" package="language_package_two"/>
</language>

In the preceding example:

If the Commerce application cannot find word or phrase in the en_GB package, it looks in other packages in following sequence:

Specifying all inheritances between the language packages might result in creating circular inheritance chains. Use Magento\Test\Integrity\App\Language\CircularDependencyTest test to locate and fix such chains.

Configure multiple packages for a language

To help you to make your store more flexible, you can upload several language packages for the same language in your store. Thus, you can use different custom packages for different parts of your store because the system compiles a single package from all packages that are available for a language.

To enable an additional package for an existing language, name the new package any name except for an existing language code name (to avoid confusion). Specify configurations of a package in the language package’s language.xml meta-information file as discussed in the next section.

Examples of using translation commands

The following sections provide end-to-end examples of using the commands discussed in this topic to create translation dictionaries and translation packages:

Example: Create a translation dictionary for a module or theme

To add a German translation to a module or theme that you want to distribute to other merchants:

Example: Create a language package

Similar to the preceding example, generate a CSV file, but instead of specifying a module or theme directory, specify the entire Commerce application root directory. The resulting CSV contains any phrases that the command could find in the code.