Best approach for localize images

Question

What is the best approach in order to localize images (buttons and other content) in a i18n rails app?

Proudlove

Answer 1

I usually inject the locale name in every path or in the image name. In the first case, create different folders for different locales

/public/images/en/file.png
/public/images/it/file.png

image_tag("#{I18n.locale}/file.png")

In the second case

/public/images/file.it.png
/public/images/file.en.png

image_tag("file.#{I18n.locale}.png")

I usually prefer the second solution because there are many assets I don't need to localize and I often need to keep translated/common assets in the same folders to take advantage of convenction-over-configuration pattern.

Volz

Answer 2

My 2 cents to this old question.

I prefer a helper method approach and ignore the default locales, so I don't have to append .en to all my assets

def localize(image_path, type = :svg) image_path.concat('.').concat(I18n.locale.to_s) if I18n.locale != I18n.default_locale image_path.concat('.').concat(type.to_s) if type image_path end

used like:

= image_tag localize('svg/feature-one-bubble-copy')

Cleavage

Answer 3

A simpler way, if your site does not contain a lot of images with text that needs translating, is to just think about the images as just the image file name that you reference. That, being a string, can be translated just like everything else:

en.yml

images:
  header: my_header.png

it.yml:

images:
  header: my_header.it.png

Then just simply do

image_tag(I18n.t('images.header'))

Marlin

Answer 4

In a recent app I tried i18n translations for the first time with some success, although the code may be a bit messy.

In the application_controller I have:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  before_filter :set_locale

  AVAILABLE_LOCALES = I18n.backend.available_locales

  private

##########
  # Internationalisation
  # For more information see http://guides.rubyonrails.org/i18n.html
  # Additional locale starting points can be found here http://github.com/svenfuchs/rails-i18n/tree/a0be8dd219ccce6716955566ee557cc75122cb33/rails/locale

  def tld
    domain_array = request.subdomains.split(".")
    domain_array[0] == "www" ? domain_array[1].to_s : domain_array[0].to_s
  end

  def available_locales
    AVAILABLE_LOCALES
  end

  def set_locale
    I18n.locale = extract_locale_from_subdomain
  end

  def extract_locale_from_subdomain
    (available_locales.include? tld.to_sym) ? tld  : nil unless tld.blank?
  end

end

This basically looks up the appropriate language from the subdomain specified, so http://en.mysite.com is in English and http://it.mysite.com is in Italian.

Next is your views, where you simply use:

<%= t(:click_to_edit) %>

Lastly, in config/locales create a en.yml file with the translations required:

en:
  admin_menu: "Admin Menu"
  Arabic: "Arabic"
  back: "Back"
  Basque: "Basque"
  blogs: "Blogs"
  blog_list: "Blog List"
  blogroll: "Blogroll"

The Italian file contains:

it:    
  admin_menu: "Menu Amministrazione"
  Arabic: "Italian Arabic"
  back: "Indietro"
  Basque: "Italian Basque"

Errant

The question refers to images, not text content. – Eh