Internationalization, L10n and I18N

Question

According to the W3, with regard to L10n and I18N, I have separated the explanation below that will serve as a basis to illustrate my doubts.

_{L10n [ source ]}

Generally regarded only as a synonym for translation of a graphical interface or documentation, localization is substantially much more complex. It may imply customization related to:

1. Date, time and number formats
2. Use of currency
3. Verification and classification
4. Symbols, icons and colors
5. Texts and graphics that, in a given culture, may be subject to misinterpretation
6. Variation of legal requirements

_{I18n [ source ]}

Internationalization is the creation and development of a product, application or content of a document that allows easy localization for target audiences that vary in culture, region or language.

1. Inclusion of support for local, regional, cultural or language preferences. Typically, this involves the predefined insertion of location data and resources derived from available libraries or user preferences. Examples include: date and time formats, local calendars, number formats and numerical systems, list classification and presentation, manipulation of personal names, address forms, etc..

---

Many examples and explanations limit to internationalization only for translation of language packs and hourly and monetary formatting. Even if the correct and broad use of i18n is made, it will always be related to the visual composition related to the view, displaying the content formatted for the language chosen by the user?

About the localization, it seems to me that in addition to maintaining a relationship with the view, it can influence controllers and models, as in examples n. 3, 5 and 6. L10n can have influence and customize the content that will be displayed - is that correct? In this case, it would also be based on the language chosen by the user or on the regionalization of the content in question?

I’ve been looking for some Pattern [PHP] for some time but only find separate examples, and L10n is almost non-existent. My I18n provides the system translation and formatting in the view without problems, but now I need to have management on the dynamic content according to the geolocation, and I believe it is the responsibility of L10n. I don’t want a multipurpose class or breaking the pattern.

Answer 1

Internationalization (i18n): is the process of developing an application that can be adapted to various language types without interfering with the core of the application.

Location (l10n): It is the process of adapting an internationalized application to a specific region or language using a specific location (locale) and translations of texts. Source Wikipedia (en).

In theory the term localization (l10n) is used synonymously with internationalization (i18n), and globalization is the summary of both terms.

To simplify, What you want is to adapt your application to support other languages, date formats, string, time zone and etc according to location (locale) user, then you will use the term internationalization.

Setup:

To internationalize your application with PHP, basically two aspects are important:

01: you can set the function setlocale() according to user-defined locale or automatically identified by your application:

Ex:

setlocale (LC_ALL, 'pt_BR', 'pt_BR.utf8');

This way you will change the format that the user views monetary value, date, strings and etc.

02: To translate the strings for this you will use the functions of gettext available for dozens of languages and also for PHP.

NOTE: It is not effective to translate your website using arrays of strings This causes disruption to front-end and back-end development, as well as performance reasons.

To use the gettext what you need to know if your server supports this feature:

if (!function_exists("gettext")){
   echo "gettext não esta instalado\n";
}
else{
   echo "gettext é suportado\n";
}

See on PHP manual how to proceed with the installation and configuration of the gettext.

After configuring your server your application is ready to be translated. Now just proceed with the development in its layers (MVC) of the application normally, but with one exception so that gettext can identify and make the translation you will now use the function _() in your strings, this in any layer that these strings will appear, model, view or controller, an ex:

echo _("text to be translated");

// ou

echo gettext("text to be translated");

Translation of the strings

I recommend the program Poedit to extract the strings of your application and generate your files .po (Portable Object) a text file containing your translations, an example below:

#: test.php:3
english/messages.po:
msgid "Hello World!"
msgstr "Hola Mundo"

This file can be translated by anyone with the help of Poedit or another editor. When saving this file another file will be compiled .mo (Machine Object) a binary file that the gettext use for reading and translation of strings.

With their .mo translated, save to a folder according to each locale:

Portable Object files

.
├── i18n
│   ├── en_US
│   │   └── LC_MESSAGES
│   │       └── messages.mo
│   ├── en_UK
│   │   └── LC_MESSAGES
│   │       └── messages.mo
│   └── es_ES
│       └── LC_MESSAGES
│           └── messages.mo
└── index.php        

Automatically your texts will be translated according to the user’s locale.

Considerations

Although at first sight the gettext seems to be and a little complex, once configured in your system your application can be translated and updated quickly and effectively, and still allows other people who are not respectively programmers to work on the translations of the files in a synchronous manner and using only an editor .po.

There are some "cons" to this way to internationalize application, one of them is due to binary files .mo are stored in the server memory each change in the files .po you will have to recompile and generate new files .mo and with it restart your server.

Alternatives if your server does not support gettext

Alternatively you can use a similar PHP library to simulate the function _() in the same way that Wordpress uses as fallback if there is no function gettext. However the use of this alternative results considerably the performance of the server.