Translate a Ruby on Rails App into German

What German changes in Rails locale files

Moving an en.yml or fr.yml file to German brings four constraints that show up across the whole interface.

• Length. German text often runs 20 to 35% longer than English, and compound nouns hit short labels hardest: ‘Permission management’ becomes Berechtigungsverwaltung, a single word that cannot wrap. Buttons, tabs, table headers and navigation items suffer first.
• Capitals. Every noun is capitalised, even mid-sentence: Ihre Bestellung wurde gespeichert. A downcase or titleize applied to a translated value in a view will break this.
• Register. Professional contexts use formal Sie: Bitte geben Sie Ihr Passwort ein. If your audience expects informal du, decide before translating and keep it consistent across every file.
• Punctuation. German quotation marks are written „like this“, and there is no space before : or ?: Passwort vergessen?.

Plurals, interpolation and Active Record messages

German uses the same Rails plural categories as English: one and other. So one: %{count} file and other: %{count} files become one: %{count} Datei and other: %{count} Dateien, and zero is plural in both languages (0 Dateien). If your source is French, watch out: French treats zero as singular, so a zero key written in the singular needs rewording.

The variable name must stay %{count}; Manuce compares every translated value with its source to make sure variables survive.

Keys under activerecord.models and activerecord.attributes feed generated messages through the %{attribute} %{message} format. ‘Email can't be blank’ becomes E-Mail muss ausgefüllt werden; the word order is fixed by that format, so check a few complete messages in the running app rather than isolated keys.

Be careful with sentences that put an article next to a variable. In German the article depends on the noun's gender: der Kunde, die Rechnung, das Projekt. A phrasing such as %{model} wurde gelöscht works for every model; ‘The %{model} was deleted’, translated literally, does not.

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not

You get the same YAML file back, ready to drop into the project:

• the source root key (en:, fr:…) replaced with de:;
• indentation, key order, quotes, comments, line endings, encoding and BOM preserved: only the values change;
• each value checked against its source (variables such as %{name}, tags in _html keys); if a mismatch persists, the source value is kept and the report says so;
• left untranslated: keys, empty values, URLs, email addresses, numbers, colours, date formats, identifiers and anything you have marked as non-translatable.

Word count covers values only, keys and tags excluded; German is charged at the base rate (×1 coefficient).

What Manuce does not do:

• strings hard-coded in .erb views or controllers are not in the YAML and are not handled;
• a format such as %m/%d/%Y stays as it is: you will want %d.%m.%Y, the German convention;
• month names and number separators (1.234,56) usually come from the rails-i18n gem, not from your own files;
• no sworn or certified translation: an interface does not need one, but a contractual document for a German authority might.

Preparing the files and checking the result

Before uploading:

• gather every source-language YAML file: Rails projects often split strings across en.yml, models/en.yml or devise.en.yml;
• remove keys you no longer use, as they would be counted and translated;
• mark brand and product names as non-translatable;
• make sure the file loads without errors in your app.

After delivery:

• save the file as de.yml (or devise.de.yml) and add :de to config.i18n.available_locales;
• read the report: a string left in the source language because of a variable mismatch needs fixing by hand;
• walk through the screens with the longest labels at the narrowest width to catch compound nouns that overflow;
• a tool such as i18n-tasks helps spot keys present in the source locale but missing from de.

In practice

1. Upload your config/locales YAML files.
2. Choose German and a level, then read the free sample.
3. Download the file with its de: root key and the string report.
4. Save it as de.yml, add :de to the available locales and adjust date formats.
5. Test the screens with the longest labels.