Translate a YAML File into Japanese

What changes when a YAML locale file goes Japanese

Only the values in a YAML locale file reach your users, and Japanese reshapes them considerably. Three scripts sit side by side in one string: kanji carry meaning, hiragana carry grammar, katakana carry loanwords (ログイン for “log in”, ダウンロード for “download”). Words are not separated by spaces, and punctuation is full-width: 、 and 。 replace the comma and full stop.

• Length: a Japanese string often has fewer characters than its English or European source, but each character is wider on screen. A button label can be shorter in characters and still overflow.
• Register: professional Japanese expects polite language (keigo). Messages use the です／ます form and requests end in 〜してください, so “Please enter your email address” becomes メールアドレスを入力してください. Button labels, by contrast, stay short and nominal: 保存, キャンセル, with no full stop.
• Colons: Japanese commonly uses the full-width colon ：, which YAML parsers ignore. An ASCII colon followed by a space inside an unquoted value, however, can break parsing, so bear it in mind if you edit strings by hand afterwards.

Variables, plurals and counters: the Japanese traps

Japanese word order (subject, object, verb) moves placeholders around. Welcome back, %{name} becomes %{name}さん、おかえりなさい: the variable moves to the front and takes the honorific suffix さん, or 様 when addressing customers. A placeholder may therefore legitimately change position; what matters is that it is present and intact.

Plurals are the second trap. Japanese has a single CLDR plural category, other. A source block such as:

• one: "1 new message"
• other: "%{count} new messages"

is adapted to Japanese with the other form only, for instance other: "新着メッセージ%{count}件". Note the counter 件: Japanese does not pluralise the noun but attaches a classifier to the number, chosen by what is being counted (件 for messages or results, 人 for people, 個 for objects, 枚 for sheets or images). There is no space between %{count} and the counter.

If your code reads a one key directly rather than through the library's pluralisation (Rails I18n, i18n-js, Symfony Translation), check that case: the Japanese locale does not need it.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

You get back the same YAML file, ready to drop into your project: indentation, key order, quotes, comments, line endings, encoding and BOM are preserved; only the values change. For Rails, Symfony, Hugo and i18n-js, the root language key is handled, and anchors, | and > blocks and comments stay where they are.

Every translated value is checked against the source: %{name} and {name} placeholders and tags must all be there. If a mismatch persists, the source value is kept and the report says so. The report lists translated strings and strings left as they were, with the reason.

Not translated: keys, empty values, URLs, email addresses, numbers, colours, identifiers, date formats and anything marked as non-translatable. This matters for Japanese: a format such as "%m/%d/%Y" stays as it is. If you want the usual Japanese form %Y年%m月%d日, you will need to set it yourself. Manuce does not touch your application's fonts either; whether kanji display properly depends on the fonts available in your interface.

Pricing is based on the words in the values, with keys and tags excluded, and Japanese carries a ×1.6 coefficient.

Preparing the file and checking the result

• Encoding: start from a UTF-8 file. Encoding is preserved as it is, and a Western European encoding such as Latin-1 cannot represent Japanese characters.
• Terms to keep: product names, brands or technical terms you want in Latin script rather than katakana. Check them in the free sample, then in the delivered translation.
• Folded > blocks: in a folded block, each line break is read as a space. In Japanese, a stray space mid-sentence is noticeable. Display these strings after delivery; if a space appears, put the value on one line or switch it to a | block.
• Layout: test buttons, menus and notifications with the Japanese strings; wider characters can force unexpected line wrapping.
• Report: go through the strings left in the source language, note the reason given and complete them where needed.

For an interface seen by Japanese customers, the Professional level is designed for text ready to hand over; the free sample lets you judge the register before you pay.

In practice

1. Upload your YAML file (for example config/locales/en.yml) and select Japanese.
2. Review the quote, based on the words in the values, and check the free sample, especially terms to keep.
3. Pay, then download the Japanese file and its report from your client area.
4. Place the file in your project (ja.yml, messages.ja.yaml, i18n/ja.yaml) and test the interface.
5. Adjust date formats and any strings flagged in the report.