Translate a Ruby on Rails app into Italian

What Italian changes in a Rails locale file

Whatever your source language, Italian strings are often longer than their English equivalents and close to French in length, so check tight buttons and table headers if your layout was designed around English. The harder issues are grammatical.

• Plurals. In Italian, one applies only to 1; zero falls under other: “0 messaggi”, not “0 messaggio”. If you want a dedicated wording, Rails uses a zero key when it exists and the count is 0.
• Agreement. Participles agree with the noun: one: "%{count} file selezionato", other: "%{count} file selezionati", but “%{count} fatture selezionate” for a feminine noun.
• The many category. CLDR lists one, many and other for Italian, but many only covers large round numbers in compact notation (“1 milione di utenti”). Rails' default pluralisation rule only knows one and other, which is enough for everyday counters.

Articles, elision and ActiveRecord error messages

Interpolating a noun into a sentence is risky in Italian because the article depends on gender and on the noun's first letter (il, lo, la, l'). A string such as "Eliminare il %{model}?" is wrong for “l'utente” or “la fattura”. Two safe fixes: a wording without an article ("Eliminare questo elemento?") or one key per model.

The same applies to errors.format, which defaults to "%{attribute} %{message}": “Email non può essere vuoto” is wrong, as email is feminine. If your attributes mix genders, a format such as "%{attribute}: %{message}" with neutral messages (“campo obbligatorio”) avoids impossible agreements.

Button labels from helpers.submit work well without an article: “Crea %{model}”, “Aggiorna %{model}”.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

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

• the root locale key (en:, fr:, de:…) becomes it:;
• indentation, key order, quotes, comments, line endings, encoding and BOM are preserved; only the values change;
• each translated value is compared with the source (variables such as %{count} or %{name}, tags); if a mismatch persists, the source value is kept and the report says so;
• keys, empty values, URLs, email addresses, numbers, colours, date formats, identifiers and anything marked as non-translatable are left untouched.

The report lists translated strings and those left as they were, with the reason. Pricing is based on the words in the values, excluding keys and tags; Italian is charged at the base rate (×1 coefficient).

In practice, format settings such as date.formats.default or number.currency.format are not changed. Set them for Italy yourself: "%d/%m/%Y", comma as decimal separator, full stop for thousands, currency symbol after the amount (“12,50 €”). Manuce does not produce sworn or certified translations, should your terms of service ever require one.

Register and Italian interface conventions

Formal address in Italian uses the third person, Lei: “Inserisca la Sua password” rather than “Inserisci la tua password”. This is the expected register for a business application; if your brand addresses users informally, check the register on the free extract before ordering, and keep one form across all files.

• Short buttons usually take the imperative or infinitive: “Salva”, “Annulla”, “Accedi”.
• Capitalise only the first word: “Impostazioni account”, not “Impostazioni Account”.
• Days and months are lower case: “lunedì”, “gennaio”.
• Accents matter: “perché” (acute), “è” (grave); as a capital, “È”, not “E'”.

Preparing your files and checking the result

Before uploading, make sure the source file is complete: a key missing in the source will be missing in Italian. Mark product or plan names that must stay as they are as non-translatable.

After delivery:

1. Check the YAML loads: ruby -ryaml -e "YAML.load_file('config/locales/it.yml')". Italian is full of apostrophes (l', dell', un'); inside a single-quoted YAML string they must be doubled.
2. Add :it to config.i18n.available_locales.
3. Test counters at 0, 1 and 2, and submit forms with errors to check agreement.
4. Read the report: every string left in the source language is explained there.

In practice

1. Gather your source config/locales/*.yml files and mark anything that must not be translated.
2. Upload them to Manuce: instant quote on the exact word count and a free one-paragraph extract.
3. Download the Italian files and the report, then place them in config/locales.
4. Add :it to the available locales, set date and number formats, and test plurals and error messages.