Translating

English is the source language and the fallback. IbexWall ships English, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, French and German. It starts in the language your system asks for (from LANG, or the first language of the session that is shipped), unless you pick one in Settings.

A language is a set of text files and one line in a list. You do not need to write any code to add one, apart from two small notification branches described below.

Add a language

All paths are in the app repository.

1. Pick the language tag, for example it, ja or pt-PT. Add it to LOCALES in crates/ibexwall-proto/src/names.rs.

2. Copy ui/locales/en/ui.ftl to ui/locales/TAG/ui.ftl and translate it.

3. For every plugin that has plugins/ID/locales/en.ftl, copy it to plugins/ID/locales/TAG.ftl and translate it.

4. In every plugins/ID/plugin.toml, add TAG = "..." under [name] and under [description]. Then run cargo xtask devkey to sign the manifests again.

5. In catalog/hardening.json, add TAG to the title, summary and breaks of every item.

6. Check your work:

   node scripts/check-locales.mjs TAG
   cargo nextest run -p ibexwall-proto

   Both list what is missing.

The app finds a language by the folder name under ui/locales, and the language picker shows each language by its own name.

The tray menu and the session agent’s notifications are in ui/src-tauri/src/lib.rs and crates/ibexwall-agent/src/main.rs. Add a branch for your language in each.

To improve an existing language, edit its files in the same places and run the same checks.

Rules for the text

Text files use the Fluent format. Follow these rules and the checker will stay quiet.

• Keep every { $variable }. You may move it within the sentence.
• A choice, such as { $n -> [one] ... *[other] ... }, must put each variant on its own line. Otherwise Fluent drops the whole message without a word. The checker reports this.
• Do not translate product names, commands, file paths, unit names or anything in backticks.
• Do not use the em dash or the en dash. Use a comma, a colon or two sentences.
• Use the same word for the same idea everywhere (firewall, snapshot, hardening). The glossary of each language is the choice already made in its ui.ftl; read it before you start.
• Keep the tone calm, plain and short. Say what happens and what the person can do.

Send it

Send your work as a pull request. Every commit needs a sign-off (git commit -s); see Contributing. If you are unsure about a term, open the pull request anyway and ask in it.