Rails Translation Made Easy

From time to time, we’re getting requests to support translation for Ruby on Rails (RoR) application. We’re starting to work on this and are looking for brave beta testers.

Ruby on Rails includes great facilities for running multilingual websites. You can arrange the application’s texts in YAML files and the Rails i18n allows loading views in their right language.

But there’s a big gap. While it’s easy to build a multilingual Rails application, maintaining translations in several languages is a huge task.

Many Rails applications include hundreds of tiny YAML resource files and erb templates. You might be able to spend the time, once, and get all of them translated. However, as the application evolves, it’s close to impossible to keep translations in sync.

Rails Translation With ICanLocalize

ICanLocalize already includes the facilities to handle Ruby on Rails projects.

Our Software Localization projects support many resource file formats, including YAML. The Website Translation system handles HTML with preprocessor codes, including the Ruby meta-tags ( <% %> ).

What we’re missing is the project automation. Until now, our system is used to handling one file at a time. If you’re translating software, you normally have one resource file. Rails applications include hundreds of YAML and erb files, so we need to add the ability to batch upload everything.

One Click Translation

You will upload one ZIP file that includes the entire app directory. This ZIP can include whatever you choose and should normally contain all YAML and erb templates (we don’t need your .rb files).

Our system will go through this ZIP archive and get all files for translation from it. It will extract the texts for translation and allow the translators to work on them without having to edit your sources.

When translation is complete, you’ll download a ZIP file which includes both your originals and all translations. You can just unzip this archive onto your existing Rails directory and you’re good to go.

Auto-detect Changes

The most powerful feature about our upcoming Rails translation is, no doubt, the ability to detect what’s changed in the application and update the translations.

When you’re ready for a new release, repeat the steps you did when you sent the application for the first translation. Again, ZIP everything and upload. The system will go through everything again and check what’s new or updated.

The translators will only need to translate the new texts and we will bill you only for that.

When complete, you will download the updated ZIP file, containing everything again. It will include both existing and new translations.

Want to Join?

We’re planning to have this RoR translation ready in a few weeks. If you’re building a multilingual Rails applications and need help translation, leave a message here. We’ll be happy to let you try it out before the public release.