openlibrary-i18n

Canonical home for Open Library translation files.

This repository holds the .po translation files for all supported languages, the messages.pot template, translation tooling, and CI validation tests. It is the single source of truth for OL's localized strings.

Language coverage

23 active languages: ar, as, bn, cs, de, es, fr, hi, hr, id, it, ja, ko, pl, pt, ro, ru, sc, te, tl, tr, uk, zh.

Repository structure

openlibrary-i18n/
  locale/
    de/messages.po
    es/messages.po
    ...  (one directory per language)
  messages.pot                 # source string template (downloaded from openlibrary)
  scripts/
    translate.py               # translation pipeline: sync → AI gap-fill → validate → compile
  tests/
    test_po_files.py           # HTML structure parity validation
    validators.py              # format-string validation
  .github/workflows/
    validate-pr.yml            # blocks PRs that fail test_po_files.py

How translations work

1. When the source strings in openlibrary change, messages.pot is updated automatically by the generate-pot pre-commit hook.
2. A GitHub Actions workflow downloads the latest messages.pot, runs i18n-messages update for each language, fills translation gaps using an AI translation API, validates the result, and opens a PR.
3. PRs that introduce format-string mismatches or broken HTML in translations are blocked by CI.

Contributing translations

To improve a translation for your language, edit the relevant locale/{lang}/messages.po file and open a pull request. CI will verify your changes automatically.

Related

• Open Library — main application repo
• i18n extraction pipeline epic #13061