Translate a Laravel App into German

What German does to the strings in a Laravel app

German uses the Latin alphabet and reads left to right, so the difficulties are in layout and grammar rather than script. German text often runs 20 to 35% longer than English, and compound nouns hit short labels hardest: "User management" becomes "Benutzerverwaltung", a single word the browser will not break without help. Buttons, tabs and table headers sized for English can overflow in your Blade views.

• Capitals: every noun takes a capital letter ("Ihre Bestellung", "Neues Passwort"). A string passed through Str::lower() or styled with text-transform: lowercase becomes wrong in German.
• Register: business software addresses users formally with Sie ("Bitte melden Sie sich an."). Some consumer apps use the informal du; decide before translation and keep it consistent across the file.
• Punctuation: German puts no space before ? or !, which matters if your source is French. Quotation marks are written „…“.
• Plurals: German has only two CLDR categories, one and other, which maps neatly onto Laravel's short form "Datei|Dateien".

Placeholders, plurals and validation: Laravel-specific traps

In a Laravel JSON file the key is usually the source sentence itself and the value is its translation. Three things need care when the target is German.

1. Placeholders and their case. Laravel treats :name, :Name (first letter capitalised) and :NAME differently. German word order often moves them: "Welcome, :name" becomes "Willkommen, :name", but "Deleted :count files" becomes ":count Dateien gelöscht". Manuce compares every value with its source to confirm the same placeholders are present.
2. Strings used with trans_choice. A value such as "{0} No files|{1} One file|[2,*] :count files" must keep its segments and ranges: "{0} Keine Dateien|{1} Eine Datei|[2,*] :count Dateien". Check these lines after delivery; a lost segment raises no error, it simply shows the wrong text.
3. Grammatical gender in validation messages. Messages like "The :attribute field is required." receive a field name at runtime. In German the article depends on gender (der, die, das); the phrasing "Das Feld :attribute ist erforderlich." avoids the issue because the article belongs to Feld, not to the inserted name.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

You get the same file in the same format: indentation, key order, quotes, comments, line endings, encoding and BOM are preserved; only the values change. Save it as lang/de.json and it is ready to go back into the project.

• Keys are never translated, which is essential because __('Log in') looks up that exact key.
• Also left untouched: empty values, URLs, email addresses, numbers, colours, date formats, identifiers and anything you mark as non-translatable.
• Each translated value is checked against the source (placeholders, any HTML tags). If a mismatch persists, the source value is kept and the report says so, alongside the list of translated strings and those left as is, with the reason.
• Pricing is based on the words in the values only; keys and tags are excluded.

Limits worth knowing: PHP array files (lang/en/auth.php, validation.php and so on) are not supported and must be converted to JSON before upload. Manuce does not touch your code, so German date formats (d.m.Y), number formats (1.234,56) and Carbon's locale remain your application's job. Manuce does not produce certified (sworn) translations either, which matters if, say, legal terms must be certified.

Preparing the file and checking the result

Before uploading:

• Start from your most complete language file and make sure every string called with __() or @lang is in it; a missing string will stay in the source language in the German interface.
• Convert any PHP translation files you want translated into JSON. For the standard validation messages, community packages already ship a German version, so you only need to pay for your own strings.
• State the register you want (Sie or du) and mark product or module names as non-translatable.

After delivery:

• Read the report and deal with any values kept in the source language.
• Switch the locale to de and walk through screens with short labels: menus, buttons, table headers.
• Check that your layout outputs <html lang="de">; this is what lets hyphens: auto break "Benutzerverwaltung" correctly.
• Test each plural string with 0, 1 and 2 items.

In practice

1. Gather your app's strings into one source JSON file, converting PHP array files if needed.
2. Upload the file, choose German and the Sie or du register, then review the quote and the free sample.
3. Download the translated file and save it as lang/de.json.
4. Read the report, then test the interface with the de locale, especially short labels and plurals.