The slides for @frederikvollert's talk at the #SFRAILS meetup in San Francisco. Typical best practices for i18n and l10n to translate and make your Rails application ready for an international audience. Looking to follow up with a step by step guide, what do you think?

1. March 22nd 2016
by @frederikvollert

2. Internationalization
"i18n"

3. Internationalization
"i#{'nternationalizatio'.length}n"

4. i18n: Preparing code for international audience
"Hello!" can become "¡Hola!"
Uber becomes Über, or �ber
ASCII or UTF-8 ?
.de or /de, Accept-Header
03/22/16 2pm PST
or 14:00h 22.03.2016 CET
Anybody got an IBAN or EC-Card?
Copy & Templates
Encoding
Routing & Language detection
Date & Time
Currency & Payment

5. Tips and Tricks
Prepare early! Use keys in templates from the start;
Use constants and symbols instead of string values for
e.g. <select> options
UI: Allow 20% stretching space for captions (Even more on buttons)
Every time should be stored as UTC
Money should be stored as integer amounts in smallest unit of currency
(No float) with currency name
Make sure you use UTF-8 as encoding

6. Localization
"l10n"

7. l10n: Adapting software to a specific locale
Translation of locale file (string file)
Support for local currency
Are your graphics, references and
name culturally adequate?
Is your service legal in China? Tax?
pt-BR:
welcome: "Oi!"
Does your PSP handle ¥ or € ?
Wix.com, Mitsubishi Pajero

8. "Salud" != "Oi"
br != pt-BR
Language code-Country code
Locale codes are well-defined
(ISO 3166, ISO 639, RFC 5646)
en-GB, en-US, de-DE, pt-BR, pt-PT

9. Rails i18n support
I18n.t(:welcome, default: "Hello!", scope: [:home, :index])
Partial in path "app/views/home/index"
<h1>t(".welcome")</h1>
<h1>t("home.index.welcome")</h1>
I18n.l(@user.created_at, format: :long)
Localized time and date notations
Pro-Tip: I18n.with_locale(temporary_locale) do … end

10. Placeholders
Pluralization
html-suffix
Rails i18n features
greeting: "Hello, %{name}!"
t(:greeting, name: "Frederik")
item:
one: "%{count} item"
other: "%{count} items"
t(:item, count: @items.length)
body_html: "<b>Statement!</b>"

11. Language detection
request.env["HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE"]
I18n.default_locale = :en
Routing param
(Store in cookie)
config/routes.rb:
scope "/(:language)", language: /(en|de|fr)/ do
get "features" => "home#features"
end

12. Joining translated chunks is a bad idea (as are elaborate placeholders and
YAML’s :<< )
SEO
Top-level domain brand.de > brand.com/de or de.brand.com
However, Page authority vs. Domain authority, Google vs. Facebook
Gettext as rails-i18n alternative:
https://github.com/grosser/gettext_i18n_rails
Excel spreadsheet-driven processes will not work forever
Additional things to consider

13. Useful links & gems
Rails i18n guide
https://github.com/enriclluelles/route_translator
I18n routes: /en/cars becomes /de/autos
https://github.com/phrase/slimkeyfy
Extract string file from .slim templates easily (Contributions welcome!)
https://github.com/phrase/phraseapp-in-context-editor-ruby
In-context editor for Rails applications

15. <5 minutes
via API
<12 hours
with 1-click
export
PhraseApp Translation Platform

16. Translate and
edit copy
inside your
Rails app.
PhraseApp Rails In-Context Editor

17. FAMILO achieved
400% global user growth;
surpassed 1 million users.
"PhraseApp helped us
streamline our
localization and become
an industry leader."
Hauke
Windmueller
CEO, FAMILO

18. Thank you!
Frederik Vollert
@frederikvollert
+1 (650) 898-9785
frederik@phraseapp.com
PhraseApp
720 University Ave
Palo Alto