lin

lin is a CLI tool that translates locale JSONs with GPT (currently).

get started

install

npm i -D @yuo-app/lin

or use -g to install globally for non-npm projects.

setup

You will need:

• a project with i18n set up
• a default locale JSON file (e.g. en-US.json)
• OPENAI_API_KEY in your .env file

lin needs to know 3 things to work:

• locales: an array of locales to translate
• defaultLocale: the default from the locales array
• directory: the folder with the locale JSON files

Create an i18n.config.ts (or js, json, etc, see Config) file in the root of your project:

import { defineConfig } from '@yuo-app/lin'

export default defineConfig({
  locales: ['en-US', 'es-ES'],
  defaultLocale: 'en-US',
  directory: 'locales',
})

Important

lin will be able to infer all these from your existing i18n setup.

usage

Tip

Run lin -h and lin <command> -h to see all the options.

translate

The translate command syncs all locale JSON files with the default locale JSON file. It finds the missing keys in locales, and translates them with one GPT request.

lin translate

To translate only specific locales, list them like this:

lin translate es fr

You can also use the translate command to add a new language.

1. First add the locale code to locales in the i18n config
2. Then run lin translate and it will create the new locale JSON file

Note

There is some syntax around locale codes:

• locale JSONs should be named with the full locale code (e.g. en-US.json): lanugage code 2 characters, country code 2 characters
• in commands - just like above - you can use the first 2 letters as a shorthand (e.g. en to match en-**)
• all is a special keyword that matches all locales
• def means the default locale from the config

add

add can be useful when writing a new part of the UI. You can use it to quickly add a new key to the default locale and translate it to all the locales.

lin add ui.button.save Text of the save button

ui.button.save will be the key inserted to the JSONs, and the rest of the arguments will be the value ie. the translated text.

Note

if the key is nested, it should be in dot notation like ui.button.save

To add a key to a specific locale, use the -l flag:

lin add -l ko ui.button.save Text of the save button

Listing multiple locales is done by using the -l flag multiple times:

lin add ui.button.save -l jp Text of the save button -l zh

(flags can be all over the place, but their values stop at the first space)

For adding more keys, it's usually best to just directly edit the default JSON and then use lin translate to translate them. But translate does not remove keys, so del is needed for that.

del

del just removes keys from the locale JSON files.

lin del nav.title footer.description

tidy

tidy provides a quick way to check everything is set up correctly; it prints info about the locales.

lin tidy

You can also use it to sort the locale JSONs which can happen as translate and add don't keep the order.

To sort alphabetically:

lin tidy abc

To sort with respect to the default locale:

lin tidy def

config

Tip

All properties in the config can be used as CLI flags too.

config file

Use only one config file.

lin config

• lin.config.ts

Show all

• lin.config.{ts, mts, cts, js, mjs, cjs, json, ∅}
• .linrc.{ts, mts, cts, js, mjs, cjs, json, ∅}
• lin in package.json
• lin in your vite or nuxt config

i18n config

• i18n.config.ts or i18n in lin.config.ts

Show all

• i18n in lin config
• i18n.config.{ts, mts, cts, js, mjs, cjs, json, ∅}
• .i18nrc.{ts, mts, cts, js, mjs, cjs, json, ∅}
• lin.i18n in package.json
• lin.i18n in your vite or nuxt config

LLM config

for the add and translate commands

The OpenAI options (ex. temperature) are exposed directly in options in the lin config.

context in config

This simple string is directly added to the system prompt. Use it to provide extra information to the LLM about your project.

context: 'hello gpt friend, how do you do'

with arg

You can use this flag with locales to add them to the context window. This will add the entire ja-JP.json file to the LLM.

lin translate zh -w jp