I18n Inflector

i18n-inflector version 2.6.7 (Little Kózka)

Summary

This library contains a backend module for I18n that adds some extra functionality to standard backend. It overwrites the translate method in a way that it will interpolate additional inflection tokens present in translations.

Synopsis

require 'i18n-inflector'

I18n.translate( 'to_be', :number  => :singular,
                         :tense   => :past,
                         :person  => 2        )
#=> You were here

I18n.translate('welcome', :gender => :female)
#=> Dear Lady

Why?

You can use I18n Inflector to (relatively easy) create translations for highly inflected languages (like those belonging to Slavic language family). You can also use it in translation services that may operate on sentences instead of exact words.

When?

It is intended to be used in a web projects or other projects where translations are performed by many people, yet there is a need to inflect sentences with some external variables. To achieve similar functionality lambdas can be used but including many Proc objects might be considered unsafe or memory consuming.

See i18n-inflector-rails if you need Rails integration.

How?

I18n Inflector lets you build you own inflection patterns contained in translation entries. The patterns may contain simple conditions and tokens, which combined with parameters passed to I18n.translate method can produce inflected strings.

Features

  • Inline inflection using patterns in translation data.

  • Key-based inflection using individual inflection keys.

  • Definable inflection kinds and tokens.

  • Easy to use public API for inflection data.

  • Configurable using special scope of translation data.

  • Lazily evaluated Proc and Method objects as inflection options.

  • Complex patterns support; inflection by more than one kind at a time.

  • Negative matching, aliases, default tokens, token groups and more…

Description

The I18n Inflector extends the translate method from I18n in a way that it will interpolate additional inflection tokens present in translations. These tokens may appear in patterns which are contained within @{ and } symbols. Configuration is stored also in translation data, in a scope <locale>.i18n.inflections, where locale is a locale subtree.

You can create your own inflection kinds (gender, title, person, time, author, etc.) of tokens to group them in a meaningful, semantical sets. That means you can apply Inflector to do simple inflection by a gender or a person, when some language requires it.

It adds the inflector object to the default backend so you can use many methods for accessing loaded inflection data at runtime, or to set up global switches that are controlling the engine.

Short example

Example configuration which uses translation data:

en:
  i18n:
    inflections:
      gender:
        f:        "female"
        m:        "male"
        n:        "neuter"
        female:   @f
        male:     @m
        default:  n

Example translation data:

en:
  welcome:  "Dear @{f:Lady|m:Sir|n:You|All}!"

  @same_but_as_key:
    f:        "Lady"
    m:        "Sir"
    n:        "You"
    @prefix:  "Dear "
    @suffix:  "!"
    @free:    "All"

Note about YAML parsing

The example above is not compatible with Psych parser, which is used by Rails 3. There are two ways to solve that problem.

First is to change a YAML file and replace any value that has special meaning with a symbol:

en:
  i18n:
    inflections:
      gender:
        f:        "female"
        m:        "male"
        n:        "neuter"
        female:   :@f
        male:     :@m
        default:  :n

Second way is to use other parser by adding to config/boot.rb:

require 'yaml'
YAML::ENGINE.yamler = 'syck'

New features

From version 2.1.0 the Inflector supports so called named patterns, which can be used if there is a need to be strict and/or to use the same token names but assigned to different kinds. Example:

welcome:  "Dear @gender{f:Lady|m:Sir|n:You|All}"

From version 2.2.0 the Inflector supports complex patterns, which can be used to inflect some sentence or a word by more than a one kind. That might be very helpful for highly inflected languages. An example pattern:

welcome:  "Dear @gender+number{f+s:Lady|f+p:Ladies|m+s:Sir|m+p:Gentlemen|All}"

Requirements

Download

Source code

Gem

Installation

  • gem install i18n-inflector

Detailed example

YAML:

en:
  i18n:
    inflections:
      gender:
        f:        "female"
        m:        "male"
        n:        "neuter"
        o:        "other"
        default:  n

  welcome:  "Dear @{f:Lady|m:Sir|n:You|All}"

Code:

I18n.t('welcome')
# => "Dear You"

I18n.t('welcome', :gender => :m)
# => "Dear Sir"

I18n.t('welcome', :gender => :unknown)
# => "Dear You"

I18n.inflector.options.unknown_defaults = false
I18n.t('welcome', :gender => :unknown)
# => "Dear All"

I18n.t('welcome', :gender => :o)
# => "Dear All"

I18n.inflector.options.excluded_defaults = true
I18n.t('welcome', :gender => :o)
# => "Dear You"

More information

Tests

You can run tests both with

  • bundle exec rake test or just bundle exec rake

  • run bundle exec rake testv4 to test with version 4 of I18n

  • run a test file directly, e.g. ruby -Ilib -Itest test/inflector_test.rb

Common rake tasks

  • bundle exec rake bundler:gemfile – regenerate the Gemfile

  • bundle exec rake docs – render the documentation (output in the subdirectory directory doc)

  • bundle exec rake gem – builds package (output in the subdirectory pkg)

  • bundle exec rake test, bundle exec rake testv4 – performs tests

  • bundle exec rake Manifest.txt – regenerates the Manifest.txt file

  • bundle exec rake ChangeLog – regenerates the ChangeLog file

Credits

Heise Media Polska supports Free Software and has contributed to this library by paying for my food during the coding.

Donations

If you like my work you can send me some BitCoins:

  • 13wZbBjs6yQQuAb3zjfHubQSyer2cLAYzH

Or you can endorse my skills on LinkedIn:

License

Copyright © 2011,2012 by Paweł Wilk.

i18n-inflector is copyrighted software owned by Paweł Wilk ([email protected]). You may redistribute and/or modify this software as long as you comply with either the terms of the LGPL (see LGPL), or Ruby’s license (see COPYING).

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.