Translate a YAML file into Spanish (Rails, Symfony, Hugo)

What changes when a YAML file goes into Spanish

Spanish uses the Latin alphabet and runs left to right, so a UTF-8 file raises no encoding issues. The real work lies in the text and in how your interface displays it.

• Longer strings. Spanish runs longer than English. Sign in becomes Iniciar sesión; Settings becomes Configuración. Fixed-width buttons and tabs overflow first.
• Inverted marks. Questions open with ¿ and exclamations with ¡: Delete this file? becomes ¿Eliminar este archivo?. If your code appends the question mark itself, the opening sign ends up stranded, so keep the whole sentence in the value.
• Capitalisation. Spanish capitalises only the first word of a heading: Account Settings becomes Configuración de la cuenta, not title case. Days and months are lower case (lunes, enero).
• Grammatical gender. Welcome, %{name} is either Bienvenido, %{name} or Bienvenida, %{name} depending on the user, which no translator can know from the file. For a mixed audience, review these strings and consider a neutral phrasing such as Te damos la bienvenida, %{name}.
• Spain or Latin America. Vocabulary differs (ordenador / computadora, móvil / celular), as does the plural ‘you’ (vosotros in Spain, ustedes elsewhere). Use the free sample to check that vocabulary and the informal tú or formal usted suit your users.

Plurals and variables: one, many, other

CLDR defines three plural categories for Spanish: one, many and other. one covers 1; other covers most other numbers, including zero (0 artículos). many, a more recent addition, applies to very large round numbers around the million mark, where Spanish requires de: 1 millón de usuarios.

A Rails example:

• one: "%{count} item" becomes one: "%{count} artículo"
• other: "%{count} items" becomes other: "%{count} artículos"

Manuce adapts plurals to the target language. Many libraries (rails-i18n, Hugo) still use only one and other for Spanish, so confirm what yours expects before shipping.

%{name} and {name} placeholders are checked in every value. Word order often shifts: %{count} new messages becomes %{count} mensajes nuevos, with the adjective after the noun. Full sentences with placeholders translate cleanly; sentences assembled from several concatenated keys almost always read badly in Spanish.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

You get back the same file, in the same format, ready to drop into your project: indentation, key order, quoting, 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 (en: becomes es: where the file has one).
• Anchors and aliases (&defaults, *defaults), | and > block scalars, and comments stay in place.
• Each translated value is compared with its source (placeholders, tags). 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 marked as not for translation.

The accompanying report lists the strings translated and those left as they were, with the reason.

What Manuce does not do: localise your date or number formats. A %B %d, %Y pattern stays as it is, whereas Spanish usage is closer to %d de %B de %Y; you will need to change it yourself. Pricing counts the words in values only, keys and tags excluded, and Spanish is charged at the base rate (×1).

Preparing the file and checking the result

Before uploading:

• Make sure the source file parses without errors; translation will not repair broken YAML.
• Where you can, merge sentences split across several keys, for the word-order and ¿ ¡ reasons above.
• For a product name or term that must stay in English, check how it appears in the free sample, then in the delivered file.

After delivery:

• Reload the file with your usual tooling or a YAML validator, then run the application in Spanish.
• Test plurals with 0, 1 and 2 items.
• Look over narrow buttons and menus, and any dialogue that asks a question.
• Set number separators yourself: Spain writes 1.234,56, Mexico 1,234.56.
• Save the file under the name your framework expects, for example config/locales/es.yml (Rails), translations/messages.es.yaml (Symfony) or i18n/es.yaml (Hugo).

In practice

1. Check that your source YAML file parses without errors.
2. Upload it: the quote appears straight away, based on the words in the values.
3. Choose Spanish and a level, then review the free sample (vocabulary, tú or usted).
4. Download the translated file and its report from your account.
5. Reload the file, test plurals and long labels, and adjust date and number formats.