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Every user-visible string goes through a catalog. English and Simplified Chinese are required for every new string; other locales (es, fr, ko, pl, pt) may lack entries, and their UI shows the English text until a translator adds it.

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Two catalogs

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Source text

Most text is written in English at the call site. The UI primitives (labels, buttons, menus, dialogs, tooltips) pass the strings they are given through the source-text catalog, so this is translated automatically:
The text catalog test treats a string as translatable when it reaches the translation layer directly: the argument of tx / txTemplate, the text children of T, Button and Dialog, and props or object keys such as label, title, description, tooltip, placeholder, message, hint, aria-label. Text built at runtime uses the tx tag, which looks up a template with named placeholders:
src/platform/locales/text/zh.json
Action titles and categories are translated the same way (an action.<id> message key, if present, takes precedence). The English title stays searchable in Find Action.

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Messages

Keyed messages use an ICU-lite syntax:
  • {name} parameters (numbers are locale-formatted);
  • {n, plural, =0 {none} one {# file} other {# files}};
  • {g, select, a {…} other {…}};
  • {n, number}.
English (en.json) is bundled and is the fallback for missing keys; other locales load lazily.

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Rules

  • Add every new string to both en and zh. For source text, that is text/en.json (the English text mapped to itself) and text/zh.json. For a message key, en.json and zh.json.
  • Rewording a string drops its translation. Source-text keys are the English text, so if you change the wording at the call site, update the catalog entries too.
  • Remove entries you orphan. The test fails on catalog entries whose text no longer appears anywhere in src/, the Rust crates or languages/.
  • Translate whole sentences. Don’t splice English words into translated text (${kind.toLowerCase()}, ${n === 1 ? "" : "s"}); write one text per variant, or use a plural message.
  • No untagged template literals in an exact lookup: `Cannot open ${path}` can never be translated. Use the tx tag.
  • Backend text (error messages and the like) counts as used as long as the literal appears in the source; add its translation like any other text.
  • Chinese terminology: follow the existing entries in text/zh.json and zh.json for the same concepts, so one English term doesn’t get two translations.

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Tests

Run them on their own while iterating:

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Plugins

Plugins ship their own translations in the package; that mechanism is documented for plugin authors in plugins/README.md (Translations). The rules on this page apply to the IDE’s own UI.