i18next

Fink edits i18next JSON files in your GitHub repository: the files that i18next, react-i18next and next-i18next load. You see each key's translations side by side, Fink flags missing ones, and it commits only the files you changed.

Set up

Add an inlang project next to your app. The quickest way:

npx i18next-cli init --inlang

This creates project.inlang/settings.json for your existing JSON files. Check that the generated pathPattern points at your files, then commit the folder and open the repository at fink.inlang.com.

To write the settings by hand, see Set up a project.

From i18next paths to pathPattern

i18next configs often use {{lng}} and {{ns}} in loadPath. In inlang settings:

• The language placeholder is {locale}.
• There is no namespace placeholder. List each namespace as its own entry (see below).
• Paths are relative to the folder that contains project.inlang. Put project.inlang next to your app's package.json, so ./public/locales/... points at the right place. In a monorepo, each app can have its own project.

Example for a Next.js app with next-i18next or react-i18next and files at public/locales/{lng}/{ns}.json:

{
  "$schema": "https://inlang.com/schema/project-settings",
  "baseLocale": "en",
  "locales": ["en", "fr", "ja"],
  "modules": ["https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@inlang/plugin-i18next@6/dist/index.js"],
  "plugin.inlang.i18next": {
    "pathPattern": {
      "common": "./public/locales/{locale}/common.json",
      "home": "./public/locales/{locale}/home.json"
    }
  }
}

Add an entry when you add a namespace file. Fink only shows namespaces listed here.

Namespaces

Several files per language work. Give pathPattern one entry per namespace:

"plugin.inlang.i18next": {
  "pathPattern": {
    "common": "./public/locales/{locale}/common.json",
    "dashboard": "./public/locales/{locale}/dashboard.json"
  }
}

Fink shows messages from all namespaces together and writes each one back to its own file.

What Fink understands

• Nested and flat keys. The plugin detects which one a file uses and keeps it.
• Interpolation. {{name}} appears as the variable {name} in the editor and is written back as {{name}}. Unescaped {{- name}} and simple formats like {{value, uppercase}} are supported.
• Plurals. Keys like item_one, item_other and item_few appear as one message with plural forms. See i18next plural keys.
• Context. Suffixes like friend_male are recognized, including together with plurals. If your keys contain underscores that aren't context, set contextValues in the plugin settings.

i18next plural keys

i18next stores each plural form as its own key with a suffix:

{
  "cart_zero": "Your cart is empty",
  "cart_one": "{{count}} item in your cart",
  "cart_other": "{{count}} items in your cart"
}

Fink shows these keys as one message, cart, with a form for exactly 0 and the plural forms. Each language gets the plural forms it needs, for example few and many in Polish, and Fink writes them back with the matching suffixes, such as cart_few. Ordinal plurals (_ordinal_one, _ordinal_other) work the same way. See Plurals, selects and exact numbers.

Limitations

• Exact numbers: i18next can only express exactly 0 (key_zero) next to the plural categories. Fink won't let you add a form for another exact number in an i18next project.
• Formatting with options, such as {{value, number, minimumFractionDigits: 2}}, can't be exported.
• Nesting ($t(otherKey)) is kept but can't be edited as a reference.
• Unused messages are not detected for i18next projects. Fink's code analysis only understands Paraglide JS calls.

Moving to Paraglide JS

The same inlang project can later be used by Paraglide JS, a compiler-based i18n library with typesafe messages. See paraglidejs.com.