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Translations

PhotoPrism uses gettext for localizing frontend and backend. It's one of the most widely adopted standards for translating user interfaces.

Human-readable messages like File not found are used as ids for finding matching translations, and used as defaults whenever there is no translation available.

Messages may optionally contain placeholders, like Found %{n} files, for numbers and other variables.

We strongly recommend Poedit for creating and updating translations. Download is free for Mac, Windows and Linux. Its source code can be obtained on GitHub.

Frontend

Localizations can be found in /frontend/src/locales. The POT file, only containing message ids, is translations.pot.

*.po files contain localized messages for each language identified by their locale, for example de.po for German and pt_BR.po for Brazilian Portuguese. You can open, edit and save them with Poedit to update existing translations.

Add new translation

  • In /frontend run npm run gettext-extract
  • Install a translation tool e.g. Poedit
  • Open the /frontend/src/locales/translations.pot file with Poedit
  • In Poedit click on "Create New Translation" at the bottom and select the language
  • Now you can start translating
  • When done, save your translation as *.po file using the language locale (e.g. de.po) as name
  • Add the new language to the Languages function in /frontend/src/options/options.js
  • Run npm run gettext-compile to compile existing translations into a single translations.json file
  • To test your translations you need to build the frontend again using npm run build or npm run watch

Update existing translation

  • In /frontend run npm run gettext-extract
  • Install a translation tool e.g. Poedit
  • Open the *.po file of your language e.g. /frontend/src/locales/fr.po file with Poedit
  • In the Poedit menu click "Catalogue" → "Update from POT File" → select the translations.pot file from /frontend/src/locales
  • Now you can start proofreading and adding the missing translations
  • Once your done save the changes in the *.po file
  • Run npm run gettext-compile to compile existing translations into a single translations.json file
  • To test your translations you need to build the frontend again using npm run build or npm run watch

A binary *.mo (machine object) file will be automatically saved along with every *.po file. You won't be able to open those in a text editor, but please include them in git commits or when sending translations via email. The compiled translations.json file is not required for pull requests and often causes merge conflicts.

Backend

Only asynchronous notifications and certain API responses need translation to provide a consistent user experience. Technical log messages should be in English to avoid ambiguities and (even slightly) wrong translations.

Localizations are kept in /assets/locales. The POT file, only containing message ids, is messages.pot.

default.po files in sub directories contain localized messages for each language identified by their locale, for example de/default.po for German and pt_BR/default.po for Brazilian Portuguese. You can open, edit and save them with Poedit. Please also add and commit binary *.mo files, which will be automatically created by Poedit.

Add new translation

  • Run make generate to update /assets/locales/messages.pot
  • Open the /assets/locales/messages.pot file with Poedit
  • In Poedit click on "Create New Translation" at the bottom and select the language
  • Now you can start translating
  • When done, create a new directory (using the locale as name) and save your translation there as default.po

Update existing translation

  • Run make generate to update /assets/locales/messages.pot
  • Open the /assets/locales/fr/default.po file with Poedit
  • In the Poedit menu click "Catalogue" → "Update from POT File" → select the messages.pot file from /assets/locales/
  • Now you can start proofreading and adding the missing translations
  • Once you're done, save the changes in the default.po file

Note that this will only work when you have gettext installed on your system. We recommend using our latest development image as described in the Developer Guide.