# Re: no one cares about i18n (was \[OT\]: Asking questions on t

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [May 3, 2006, 7:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418 "2006-05-03T19:02:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 17\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2006, 7:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/1 "2006-05-03T19:02:47Z")

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Do most others in the community agree with this statement? It seems to  
me  
that i18n is:

1. Actually important to many people
2. Not really the difficult to implement in concept
3. Something that people like to point out about Rails to say it’s not  
ready foir “Enterprise”

It seems to be that a big part of Rails is encouraging people to do  
things  
the “Right Way”, yet none of the Rails books/articles I have read  
(AWDwR,  
Rails Recipes, etc.) even discuss how to do i18n, let alone encourage  
it.  
Why?

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2006, 7:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/2 "2006-05-03T19:02:52Z")

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On 5/2/06, Paul B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Rails Recipes, etc.) even discuss how to do i18n, let alone encourage it.  
> Why?

My point was that compared to the number of people who read this list,  
its a relatively small number who actually know enough about i18n with  
Rails to answer his questions faster than he answered them himself.

I agree with what you’re saying here.

– James

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2006, 7:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/3 "2006-05-03T19:02:50Z")

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In my opinion Globalize has this covered, at least until m17n support  
rolls out with Ruby 2.0.  
[http://www.globalize-rails.org/wiki/](http://www.globalize-rails.org/wiki/)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 6:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/4 "2006-05-11T18:03:34Z")

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In [Peak Obsession](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/RailsLocalization) someone did  
ask _the_ question again: What is the current best solution for I18N?

I did add these links to that very same page:

Gloablize ([http://wiki.globalize-rails.org/wiki/](http://wiki.globalize-rails.org/wiki/))  
Localize  
([http://dev.rubyonrails.org/svn/rails/plugins/localization/README](http://dev.rubyonrails.org/svn/rails/plugins/localization/README))  
GLoc ([http://rubyforge.org/projects/gloc/](http://rubyforge.org/projects/gloc/))  
Multilingual  
([https://opensvn.csie.org/traccgi/multi\_lingual\_rails/trac.cgi/](https://opensvn.csie.org/traccgi/multi_lingual_rails/trac.cgi/))

A very brief feature comparision for the first three plugins is listed  
here: [http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/category/8](http://www.agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/category/8)

And then there’s the old important thread from end of last year (“Rails  
core going multiligual…ever?”): [Rails core going multiligual...ever? - Rails - Ruby-Forum](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/184)

BTW - Where’s the place to DRY up all this information and keep it up to  
date?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 8:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/5 "2006-05-11T20:15:42Z")

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I’d be most grateful if you wiki’d this. As well, it may be  
appropriate to set up a list specifically for these issues since many  
on this list don’t care/need these features. i’d be happy to join. i  
for one drown in traffic from this list and probably miss half the  
mail i should read despite browsing it regularly.

pt.

On 5/11/06, Martin Bernd S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> ([https://opensvn.csie.org/traccgi/multi\_lingual\_rails/trac.cgi/](https://opensvn.csie.org/traccgi/multi_lingual_rails/trac.cgi/))
> 
> –  
> Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/).
> 
> * * *
> 
> Rails mailing list  
> removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid  
> [http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails](http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails)

–  
Parker T.  
[http://www.parkert.com/](http://www.parkert.com/)  
510.541.0125

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 6:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/6 "2006-05-11T18:39:28Z")

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Hi,

i18n means:  
(1) Message Catalogs (Translate strings)  
(2) Formatting Date, Time, Currency and others.  
(3) String handling

Now, I mention (1) because this discussion about (1).

IMO, the most important things for (1) are:  
(a) Maintenance-ability  
\* Extract strings from .rb/rhtml/ActiveRecord to a file  
automatically.  
\* Merge the old(translated) file and new one easily.  
(b) Multi-textdomains  
\* Rails, Rails application, Plugins, Other libraries  
should have their own message catalogs.  
(c) Plural/Singler messages  
(d) Auto finding client locale correctly  
(e) Translate Rails messages

Now, Ruby-GetText-Package has already supported all of important these  
features.  
I checked other localized libraries/plugins, but they haven’t have  
enough features yet.

And it’s already supported 11 languages for Rails.  
[http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext-screenshot.html](http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext-screenshot.html)

# Of course, usually I welcome other language translators.

So, I highly recommand to try Ruby-GetText-Package once.

There is a tutorial for Ruby on Rails and Ruby-GetText-Package.  
[http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext-howto-rails.html](http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext-howto-rails.html)

HTH,

On Tue, 2 May 2006 17:15:51 -0400

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2006, 10:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/7 "2006-05-12T10:03:13Z")

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Thanks for the answers. Since I have to make a decision either for a  
plugin or as someone (more experienced in this field) recommended to  
re-invent the wheel using a gettext approach, I’ll do some evaluation  
and put the results somewhere.

Since my time is limited (we need a decision ASAP) I’ll probably just  
scratch the evaluation of the option. Anyways, I hope we can start a  
discussion and a separate forum / mailing list is a good idea (at least  
for us 5.7 billion non US Rails people 😉 ).

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2006, 12:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/8 "2006-05-12T12:05:21Z")

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I am also very interested in localization,

This goes for database content, rhtml-content (including names of  
columns of tables), mail-content etc. All that is shown to the user.

In my experience table names, and table column names in the database are  
best done in english. In the nearly 20 years I have been involved with  
developing database solutions I have never had a database with swedish  
names of tables and fields.

This is also because it you some day want to distribute your solution  
abroad, you wouldn´t want the names to be in Swedish anyway.

When Rails uses “column.human\_name”, I would like to be able to choose  
another language (Swedish). Now I get the database english names. To me  
‘human\_name’ is not what the database columns are called, they are  
rarely human name at all, since different customers of ours call the  
same object by different names in their context. To us developers it is  
the same, but not to the cusomers.

So a feature with Meta-names of the columns would be a nice feature.  
(Crystal Reports Server that we use for reporting has this: a layer of  
Meta names (human names) that are used in customer interaction, but the  
database names are something else.

SO I would like a clean separation of what is shown in the view, from  
what things are called in the model.

Per-Olof H.

PS I am new to RoR, Just been reading up till now, and just started to  
do some experimentary solutions on my desktop,

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2006, 6:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/9 "2006-05-12T18:53:53Z")

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Hi,

On Fri, 12 May 2006 12:05:21 +0200  
Per-Olof H. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> This is also because it you some day want to distribute your solution  
> (Crystal Reports Server that we use for reporting has this: a layer of  
> Meta names (human names) that are used in customer interaction, but the  
> database names are something else.
> 
> SO I would like a clean separation of what is shown in the view, from  
> what things are called in the model.

Already Ruby-GetText-Package supports ActiveRecord translation.  
(It overrides column.human\_name as you think.)  
The table/column names are extracted as the target messages.  
And they are translated correctly … you don’t need to touch your  
models by hand.

As you say, sometimes the table/column names are not human readable.  
Ruby-GetText-Package can use for English people to  
translate table/column names to human readable name.

Anyway, I recommand you try Ruby-GetText-Package once.

Installation:  
[http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext.html#Install](http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext.html#Install)  
HOWTO for Ruby on Rails:  
[http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext-howto-rails.html](http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext-howto-rails.html)

HTH,

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2006, 7:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/10 "2006-05-12T19:59:19Z")

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Masao M. wrote:

> Anyway, I recommand you try Ruby-GetText-Package once.
> 
> Installation:  
> [http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext.html#Install](http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext.html#Install)  
> HOWTO for Ruby on Rails:  
> [http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext-howto-rails.html](http://www.yotabanana.com/hiki/ruby-gettext-howto-rails.html)
> 
> HTH,

Thanks, I´ll have a look,

Per-Olof

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 10:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/11 "2006-05-14T10:41:18Z")

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Hi all,

please have a look at this posting in the new rails internationalization  
mailing list

[http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/65659](http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/65659)

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2006, 10:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/12 "2006-05-12T10:53:37Z")

</div>

Two things:

I asked Andreas, the Forum (Email Gateway) Maintainer to create a  
Mailing List / Forum (no answer yet)

I created a Rails Wiki page:  
[http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/InternationalizationComparision](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/InternationalizationComparision)

Don’t know how far I can contribute, one of our requirements is to use  
Oracle, so Globalize (and maybe all other plugins) may not do it for us.

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 10:17am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/13 "2006-07-24T10:17:37Z")

</div>

Please look at this page und the references on it (especially the I18n  
mailing list / forum):  
[http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/InternationalizationComparison](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/InternationalizationComparison)

Your problem may or may not be related to either setting the

- http header to the correct mime type / encoding
- having a wrong oracle server or client setting

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 9:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/14 "2006-07-23T21:34:50Z")

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Guys, I’ve been struggling with a similar, but simpler problem. I just  
want to be able to CRUD Swedish characters in Oracle 10g tables.

I know I’ve got the Oracle end set up properly since I can enter,  
retrieve and display  
these characters from isqlplus, but when I use a RoR generated web  
form I get “?” stored in my tables.

If you’ve work out how to do this, I’d be very grateful if you would  
tell me how you did this.

Before I’d found this tread, I posted a few times and got some good  
input back, but nothing got me quite to where I need to be.

Bealach

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [August 27, 2008, 3:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/15 "2008-08-27T03:14:12Z")

</div>

What do you guys think of [99translations.com](http://99translations.com)?

It seems like a big step towards better translation management.

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 7:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/16 "2009-03-27T19:26:01Z")

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Fernando P. wrote:  
[…]

> Actually it is a bit painful to implement, as it means removing all the  
> text from views and putting it?.. well I don’t really know.

This is why I use gettext (or faster\_gettext): the phrases themselves  
_are_ the keys, so the views look like

\_(‘Welcome to the site, %{user}!’) % {:user =\> user}

rather than

get\_message(:site\_welcome\_message, user)

This way, the view files stay legible, and the application is usable  
even if no locale is set. The translations go in .po files, which are  
an industry standard, and so translators and CAT software can be  
expected to know what to do with them.

> The yaml files are okay for short sentences, but how do you handle  
> localizing big chunks of html?  
> […]

PO files are meant to deal with arbitrarily long strings of text.  
Again, the gettext solution is best here.

## Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid  
[http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org)

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**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 2:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-no-one-cares-about-i18n-was-ot-asking-questions-on-t/59418/17 "2009-03-27T14:31:02Z")

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Paul B. wrote:

> Do most others in the community agree with this statement? It seems to  
> me  
> that i18n is:
> 
> 1. Actually important to many people
> 2. Not really the difficult to implement in concept

Actually it is a bit painful to implement, as it means removing all the  
text from views and putting it?.. well I don’t really know.

The yaml files are okay for short sentences, but how do you handle  
localizing big chunks of html? I don’t feel it fits nicely in the yaml  
files. You lose the syntax highlighting.

How do you do that?