Localization quick question

Help & Support
1

Will the correct language be chosen automatically based on where the user is, or the navigator.language value?

Or do I need to do something else to make the correct locale be chosen for my UI text elements, etc?

2

Also, can you have multiple locales with the same messages? For example, “info”: {
“locales”: [“en-US”, “en-CA”],
,
“messages”: {
},

or maybe configure a local if it starts with “en” or something like that.

3

You can’t do this, no.

The localisation system handles fallback to the language (the en) if it can’t find a language and country combination.

In this example, it would use en if it can’t find translations for en-GB for example.

1 Like
4

Had a quick check, no it doesn’t. You will have to set the locale yourself via https://developer.playcanvas.com/en/api/pc.I18n.html#locale

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5

Ah ok good to know. I had actually added a manual check for this:

const browserLanguage = navigator.language.split("-")[0];
this.app.i18n.locale = browserLanguage === "fr" ? "fr-FR" : browserLanguage === "es" ? "es-ES" : browserLanguage === "da" ? "da-DK" : "en-US";

So my manual check is unnecessary?

6

Yes, the check is not needed

7

German has a million different localization codes:
da, da-DK, de, de-AT, de-CH, de-DE, de-LI, de-LU.

If I use da and it’s not found, will it fallback to de and vice-versa? Or do I need one for da and another for de?

8

Did a quick test and it tries to fallback to the closest country match.

For example:

{
    "header": {
        "version": 1
    },
    "data": [
        {
            "info": {
                "locale": "en-US"
            },
            "messages": {
                "key": "Single key translation"
            }
        },
        {
            "info": {
                "locale": "de-de"
            },
            "messages": {
                "key": "German"
            }
        }
    ]
}

Changing to de-LI will match de-de because they are the same country. However, changing to da will fallback to en-US

As it would be your app code setting the locale, you may want to do your own check for regions to ensure you have the closest match available.

9

Ok thanks! One final question, can I use local “en” and “de”, instead of the full “en-US” and “de-de”?

10

I believe you can yes.

1 Like