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Translations

Translations

The Tasking Manager is localised using our Transifex repository. This is super easy. If you are interested, make yourself an account and apply to join the hotosm-translator team. Everybody is welcome to support translations through the Transifex website.

Developers

For developers, Tasking Manager uses Transifex to manage UI translations, and the integration is handled using the Transifex CLI.

Translations are stored in .json format as key/value pairs under frontend/src/locales/.These files follow the React-based i18n format and are synchronized with Transifex using the CLI.

Setting up Transifex CLI

To set up the Transifex client, you'll need a Transifex account and API key. In the project's top level directory, initialize Transifex service: tx init. The init process will ask for service URL (leave the default suggestion by hitting enter) and your Transifex username/password.

The .tx folder contains the Transifex config file. This is where you can find the mappings to local translation files.

Running the Transifex CLI

You can run the CLI via Docker (recommended) or install it natively. Use one of the following methods:

Use the provided helper scripts to run the CLI inside Docker:

  • macOS/Linux:
  ./scripts/transifex/tx-docker.sh pull  # Downloads the latest translations
  ./scripts/transifex/tx-docker.sh push -s  # Pushes updated source strings (English in our case)
  • Windows (PowerShell):
  ./scripts/transifex/tx-docker.ps1 pull
  ./scripts/transifex/tx-docker.ps1 push -s

These scripts will:

  • Run Transifex CLI inside a Docker container

  • Mount your project directory

  • Handle system certificates for secure API communication

If you run into certificate-related errors, update the paths in the script or try the manual install method.

Option 2: Manual (Native CLI)
  • Install CLI (macOS/Linux):
  curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/transifex/cli/master/install.sh | bash

Update translation strings

  • yarn build-locales - Execute that command in the frontend folder to get the new translatable strings from all the messages.js files in the frontend code. The changes in the strings will be pushed to frontend/src/locales/en.json file. The ideal is to execute that command before every pull request that change something in the translatable strings.
  • After the pull request is merged to the develop branch, the command tx push -s needs to be executed in order to push the changes to Transifex. The translators receive a notification every time we push changes to Transifex.

Update with latest translations

  • Before a release, new translations need to be pulled in: tx pull -af --mode translator - Gets all translations from Transifex and puts them into frontend/src/locales/.
  • The Transifex dashboard can be used to check the status of the translations. If a language is not enabled in the .tx/config file, the translation updates will be downloaded to the .tx/tasking-manager.version-4/ folder.

Adding a new language

The steps required to add a new language support to Tasking Manager are the following:

  • Add the language support using the Transifex dashboard;
  • Edit .tx/config and add a line like: trans.ml = frontend/src/locales/ml.json
  • Add the new language and language code to:
  • The SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES dictionary in the config file backend/config.py;
  • The supportedLocales array on frontend/src/utils/internationalization.js;
  • The polyfills in frontend/src/utils/polyfill.js;
  • If the new language is not yet supported by iso-countries-languages, we need to update it and publish a new version.

Pushing translations

You can also translate locally and push the Use Transifex's tx push -s (if you are using native CLI method) to push local changes to Transifex.

  • Argument -s pushes source files (English in our case)
  • Argument -t pushes all translation files

Transifex CLI Docs

Tasking Manager Transifex Dashboard

Transifex CLI GitHub

iso-countries-languages