How to program in Portuguese in Ruby on Rails?

Question

I would like to know how to program an application in Ruby on Rails in Portuguese instead of English.

There are basically three problems in that:

1. How to change the user interface to Portuguese? (Activerecord error messages, dates and times in full, etc)

2. How can I make pluralization work in Portuguese so I can create table and controller names in Portuguese? (For example: Usuario instead of User)

3. How do I change the routes of /edit for /editar and /new for /novo?

Answer 1

1 Switching interface to English

Create the file config/locales/pt-BR.yml and paste the following contents there:

pt-BR:
  # formatos de data e hora
  date:
    formats:
      default: "%d/%m/%Y"
      short: "%d de %B"
      long: "%d de %B de %Y"

    day_names: [Domingo, Segunda, Terça, Quarta, Quinta, Sexta, Sábado]
    abbr_day_names: [Dom, Seg, Ter, Qua, Qui, Sex, Sáb]
    month_names: [~, Janeiro, Fevereiro, Março, Abril, Maio, Junho, Julho, Agosto, Setembro, Outubro, Novembro, Dezembro]
    abbr_month_names: [~, Jan, Fev, Mar, Abr, Mai, Jun, Jul, Ago, Set, Out, Nov, Dez]
    order: [day, month, year]

  time:
    formats:
      default: "%A, %d de %B de %Y, %H:%M h"
      short: "%d/%m, %H:%M h"
      long: "%A, %d de %B de %Y, %H:%M h"
    am: ''
    pm: ''

  # distancia do tempo em palavras
  datetime:
    distance_in_words:
      half_a_minute: 'meio minuto'
      less_than_x_seconds:
        one: 'menos de 1 segundo'
        other: 'menos de %{count} segundos'

      x_seconds:
        one: '1 segundo'
        other: '%{count} segundos'

      less_than_x_minutes:
        one: 'menos de um minuto'
        other: 'menos de %{count} minutos'

      x_minutes:
        one: '1 minuto'
        other: '%{count} minutos'

      about_x_hours:
        one: 'aproximadamente 1 hora'
        other: 'aproximadamente %{count} horas'

      x_days:
        one: '1 dia'
        other: '%{count} dias'

      about_x_months:
        one: 'aproximadamente 1 mês'
        other: 'aproximadamente %{count} meses'

      x_months:
        one: '1 mês'
        other: '%{count} meses'

      about_x_years:
        one: 'aproximadamente 1 ano'
        other: 'aproximadamente %{count} anos'

      over_x_years:
        one: 'mais de 1 ano'
        other: 'mais de %{count} anos'

      almost_x_years:
        one: 'quase 1 ano'
        other: 'quase %{count} anos'

    prompts:
      year:   "Ano"
      month:  "Mês"
      day:    "Dia"
      hour:   "Hora"
      minute: "Minuto"
      second: "Segundos"

  # numeros
  number:
    format:
      precision: 3
      separator: ','
      delimiter: '.'
    currency:
      format:
        unit: 'R$'
        precision: 2
        format: '%u %n'
        separator: ','
        delimiter: '.'
    percentage:
      format:
        delimiter: '.'
    precision:
      format:
        delimiter: '.'
    human:
      format:
        precision: 2
        delimiter: '.'
        significant: true
        strip_unsignificant_zeros: true
      # number_to_human_size()
      storage_units:
        format: "%n %u"
        units:
          byte:
            one: "Byte"
            other: "Bytes"
          kb: "KB"
          mb: "MB"
          gb: "GB"
          tb: "TB"
      # number_to_human()
      # new in rails 3: please add to other locales
      decimal_units:
        format: "%n %u"
        units:
          unit: ""     
          thousand: "mil"
          million:
            one: milhão
            other: milhões
          billion:
            one: bilhão
            other: bilhões
          trillion:
            one: trilhão
            other: trilhões
          quadrillion:
            one: quatrilhão
            other: quatrilhões

  # Usado no Array.to_sentence
  support:
    array:
      words_connector: ", "
      two_words_connector: " e "
      last_word_connector: " e "

  # ActiveRecord
  activerecord:
    errors:
      template:
        header:
          one: "Não foi possível gravar %{model}: 1 erro"
          other: "Não foi possível gravar %{model}: %{count} erros."
        body: "Por favor, verifique o(s) seguinte(s) campo(s):"
      messages:
        inclusion: "não está incluído na lista"
        exclusion: "não está disponível"
        invalid: "não é válido"
        confirmation: "não está de acordo com a confirmação"
        accepted: "deve ser aceito"
        empty: "não pode ficar vazio"
        blank: "não pode ficar em branco"
        too_long: "é muito longo (máximo: %{count} caracteres)"
        too_short: "é muito curto (mínimo: %{count} caracteres)"
        wrong_length: "não possui o tamanho esperado (%{count} caracteres)"
        taken: "já está em uso"
        not_a_number: "não é um número"
        not_an_integer: "não é um número inteiro"
        greater_than: "deve ser maior do que %{count}"
        greater_than_or_equal_to: "deve ser maior ou igual a %{count}"
        equal_to: "deve ser igual a %{count}"
        less_than: "deve ser menor do que %{count}"
        less_than_or_equal_to: "deve ser menor ou igual a %{count}"
        odd: "deve ser ímpar"
        even: "deve ser par"
        record_invalid: "A validação falhou: %{errors}"

Then go on config/application.rb and add the content below. This makes Brazilian Portuguese the default language of the application.

config.i18n.default_locale = :"pt-BR"
I18n.enforce_available_locales = false

2 Changing pluralization to Portuguese

The archive config/initializers/inflections.rb is responsible for telling Rails how it should pluralize/singularize the names. Change it to the following content:

# encoding: utf-8
# Be sure to restart your server when you modify this file.

# Add new inflection rules using the following format
# (all these examples are active by default):
# ActiveSupport::Inflector.inflections do |inflect|
#   inflect.plural /^(ox)$/i, '\1en'
#   inflect.singular /^(ox)en/i, '\1'
#   inflect.irregular 'person', 'people'
#   inflect.uncountable %w( fish sheep )
# end
ActiveSupport::Inflector.inflections do |inflect|
  inflect.clear

  inflect.plural(/$/,  's')
  inflect.plural(/(s)$/i,  '\1')
  inflect.plural(/^(paí)s$/i, '\1ses')
  inflect.plural(/(z|r)$/i, '\1es')
  inflect.plural(/al$/i,  'ais')
  inflect.plural(/el$/i,  'eis')
  inflect.plural(/ol$/i,  'ois')
  inflect.plural(/ul$/i,  'uis')
  inflect.plural(/([^aeou])il$/i,  '\1is')
  inflect.plural(/m$/i,   'ns')
  inflect.plural(/^(japon|escoc|ingl|dinamarqu|fregu|portugu)ês$/i,  '\1eses')
  inflect.plural(/^(|g)ás$/i,  '\1ases')
  inflect.plural(/ão$/i,  'ões')
  inflect.plural(/^(irm|m)ão$/i,  '\1ãos')
  inflect.plural(/^(alem|c|p)ão$/i,  '\1ães')

  # Sem acentos...
  inflect.plural(/ao$/i,  'oes')
  inflect.plural(/^(irm|m)ao$/i,  '\1aos')
  inflect.plural(/^(alem|c|p)ao$/i,  '\1aes')

  inflect.singular(/([^ê])s$/i, '\1')
  inflect.singular(/^(á|gá|paí)s$/i, '\1s')
  inflect.singular(/(r|z)es$/i, '\1')
  inflect.singular(/([^p])ais$/i, '\1al')
  inflect.singular(/eis$/i, 'el')
  inflect.singular(/ois$/i, 'ol')
  inflect.singular(/uis$/i, 'ul')
  inflect.singular(/(r|t|f|v)is$/i, '\1il')
  inflect.singular(/ns$/i, 'm')
  inflect.singular(/sses$/i, 'sse')
  inflect.singular(/^(.*[^s]s)es$/i, '\1')
  inflect.singular(/ães$/i, 'ão')
  inflect.singular(/aes$/i, 'ao')
  inflect.singular(/ãos$/i, 'ão')    
  inflect.singular(/aos$/i, 'ao')
  inflect.singular(/ões$/i, 'ão')
  inflect.singular(/oes$/i, 'ao')
  inflect.singular(/(japon|escoc|ingl|dinamarqu|fregu|portugu)eses$/i, '\1ês')
  inflect.singular(/^(g|)ases$/i,  '\1ás')

  # Incontáveis
  inflect.uncountable %w( tórax tênis ônibus lápis fênix )

  # Irregulares
  inflect.irregular "país", "países"
end

---

However, when creating tables and controllers with names in Portuguese, you need to take some things into account:

2.1 Not all words will be correctly pluralized

Actually this can happen even when programming in English. The ideal is to open the Rails console in your application (rails console or rails c) and confer pluralisation.

For example: type "usuario".pluralize and check if the exit is "usuarios". Then type "usuarios".singularize and check if the exit is "usuario".

To avoid problems, if Rails is pluralizing wrong, before to create the tables and controllers include the following line in the inflections.rb to force the correct pluralization:

inflect.irregular "usuario", "usuarios"

Obs.: "user" is just an example, in fact it is already correctly pluralized.

2.2 Caution when creating tables and controllers with more than one word in the name

Rails pluralization works by taking English into consideration, where adjectives come before nouns. Therefore, it will only pluralize the last word of the name.

If you want to create a student grade table, do not create the template as NotaDoAluno because Rails will erroneously pluralize as NotaDoAlunos. Instead create the template as AlunoNota, so it will pluralize as AlunoNotas. The same for controllers.

In case you know what you’re doing, you can overwrite the Rails table name conventions and manually configure the table name of that template:

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.table_name = "notas_do_aluno"
end

2.3 Tables Many-to-Many

Sometimes you may want to create a model for a relationship Many-to-Many, to be able to add more fields or methods. It is common that in this case the name of the two tables is plural, to use in inflections.rb:

inflect.irregular "postagemtag", "postagenstags"
inflect.irregular "postagem tag", "postagens tags"
inflect.irregular "postagem_tag", "postagens_tags"

Thus, when rotating rails generate, it will create table names and controllers with both words in the plural, otherwise only the last word would be pluralized.

---

3 Changing routes to Portuguese

This is easy, is explained in official documentation. It’ll look something like this:

resources :usuarios, path_names: { new: "novo", edit: "editar" }

Or if you want you can change several at once using scope:

scope path_names: { new: "novo", edit: "editar" } do
  # seus resources
end

The variables _path are not changed, continue with new and edit. For example: new_usuario_path and edit_usuario_path(@usuario).

---

Bonus - Setting Time Zone

The Rails for default displays and stores at the bank at UTC time.

If you want Rails to continue saving dates/hours in UTC format, but convert to the user at another time, such as Brasilia, use the code below in config/application.rb:

config.time_zone = "Brasilia"

This is a good idea if you need to support users from different countries.

But if you want Rails to both store in the bank and display to the user at Brasilia time, use:

config.time_zone = "Brasilia"
config.active_record.default_timezone = :local

This is necessary when you are working on a legacy basis, which uses Brasilia time in its date and time columns. Or if the database is its own but you import data from another direct base via SQL, other than via Activerecord.