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Translations

Read this guide if you'd like to know

  • how to make your plugin available in other languages
  • how to make your contribution to Piwik Core available in other languages

The Basics

Piwik is available in over 50 languages and comes with many translations. The core itself provides some basic translations for words like "Visitor" and "Help". They are stored in the directory /lang. In addition, each plugin can provide its own translations for wordings that are used in this plugin. They are located in /plugins/*/lang. In those directories you'll find one JSON file for each language. Each language file consists in turn of tokens that belong to a group.

{
    "MyPlugin":{
        "BlogPost": "Blog post",
        "MyToken": "My translation",
        "InteractionRate": "Interaction Rate",
        "MyParagraphWithALink": "This translated text %1$s uses %2$s parameters."
    }
}

A group usually represents the name of a plugin, in this case "MyPlugin". Within this group, all the tokens are listed on the left side and the related translations on the right side.

Translated text entries are allowed to contain sprintf parameters, for example, "This translated text is uses a %s parameter" or "This translated text %1$s uses %2$s parameters.". Every translate function will accept extra parameters that get passed to sprintf with the text.

Building a translation key

As you will later see to actually translate a word or a sentence you'll need to know the corresponding translation key. This key is built by combining a group and a token separated by an underscore. You can for instance use the key MyPlugin_BlogPost to get a translation of "Blog post". Defining a new key is as easy as adding a new entry to the "MyPlugin" group.

Providing default translations

To replace a key with translated text, Piwik will look into the JSON file for the current language. If no entry can be found, Piwik will use the english translation by default. Therefore, you should always provide a default translation in English for all keys in the file en.json (ie, /plugins/MyPlugin/lang/en.json).

Reusing translations

As mentioned Piwik comes with quite a lot of translations. You can and should reuse them but you are supposed to be aware that a translation key might be removed or renamed in the future. It is also possible that a translation key was added in a recent version and therefore is not available in older versions of Piwik. We do not currently announce any of such changes. Still, 99% of the translation keys do not change and it is therefore usually a good idea to reuse existing translations. Especially when you or your company would otherwise not be able to provide them. To find any existing translation keys go to Settings => Translation search in your Piwik installation. The menu item will only appear if the development mode is enabled.

Translations in PHP

To translate text in PHP, use the Piwik::translate() function. Simply pass any existing translation key and you will get the translated text in the language of the current user in return. The English translation will be returned in case none for the current language exists. For example:

$translatedText = Piwik::translate('MyPlugin_BlogPost');

or

$translatedText = Piwik::translate('MyPlugin_MyParagraphWithALink', '<a href="http:://piwik.org">', '</a>');

Translation in Twig templates

To translate text in Twig templates, use the translate filter. For example,

{{ 'MyPlugin_BlogPost'|translate }}

or

{{ 'MyPlugin_MyParagraphWithALink'|translate('<a href="http://piwik.org">', '</a>') }}

Translation in JavaScript

Translating text in the browser is a bit more complicated than on the server. The browser doesn't have access to the translations and we don't want to send every translation file to every user just so a couple lines of text can be translated.

Piwik solves this problem by allowing plugins to define which translation keys should be available in the browser. It can then send only those translations in the current language to the browser.

To make a translation key available on the client side, use the Translate.getClientSideTranslationKeys event (read more about Events):

// In MyPlugin.php
public function getListHooksRegistered()
{
    return array(
        'Translate.getClientSideTranslationKeys' => 'getClientSideTranslationKeys'
    );
}

public function getClientSideTranslationKeys(&$translationKeys)
{
    $translationKeys[] = 'MyPlugin_BlogPost';
}

To use these translations in JavaScript, use the global _pk_translate() JavaScript function:

var translatedText = _pk_translate('MyPlugin_BlogPost');

Contributing translations to Piwik

Did you know you can contribute translations to Piwik? In case you want to improve an existing translation, translate a missing one or add a new language go to Piwik Translations and sign up for an account.

Getting translations for your plugin

As long as you are developing an open source plugin hosted on github, you may get in touch with us ([email protected]) in order to get your plugin translated by the Piwik translators.

You will need an account on Transifex.com. If you used a social login on Transifex, please ensure to set a password in your account settings. That will be required for fetching new translations.

Updating source strings of your plugin

While doing the initial setup for your plugin, we will import your en.json available in your githubs plugin repository and configure an autoupdate for that file. Source strings on Transifex will so automatically sync with your repo. Changing your en.json will automatically change the source strings within Transifex.

How to update/fetch your plugins translations

As soon as we have set up your plugin within our Piwik project on Transifex and there are new translations available, you will be able to update your plugin translations using the piwik console. You will need a locally installed Piwik with development mode enabled and your plugin installed. To update the translations go to the piwik directory on your development box and execute

./console translations:update -u {YourTransifexUserName} -p {YourTransifexPassword} -P {YourPluginName}

Best practices for new translation keys

Follow these guidelines when creating your own translation keys:

  1. Reuse! If a core plugin contains a translation you can use, use that instead. If there's a translation you want to use but can't because it's in the wrong case, try using functions like lcfirst and ucfirst.
  2. Reduce redundancy in your translated text. If the same text appears in multiple translated text entries, try to move the translated text out by using sprintf parameters. For example, if you have text entries like:

"You cannot use commas." and "You cannot use underscores."

Try to split them up into something like:

"You cannot use %s." "commas" and "underscores".

This guideline is more important for contributions to Piwik Core than for new plugins.