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navi-1 / docs / i18n.md

Interface language (i18n)

Navi's web client speaks en / uk / ru. The rules themselves live in the platform handbook (handbook.gnexus → 10-platform/i18n); this file only records how navi follows them and what is still untranslated.

Where the language comes from

locale_effective from GET /auth/me — the choice made in Settings (navi_users.locale_override) → the gnexus-auth account locale (navi_users.locale, a straight mirror kept by the user.profile_updated webhook) → en.

The picker is the first block of Settings → Account (webclient/src/components/settings/AccountPanel.vue) and offers Auto / English / Українська / Русский — each language named in its own language. A choice is written with PATCH /auth/me, so it follows the account to other devices and survives logout.

With NAVI_AUTH_ENABLED=false there is no account to follow: the picker drops Auto, the choice is kept in localStorage under navi.locale, and the same key is used when the visitor is not signed in.

The module

webclient/src/i18n/ — vue-i18n is deliberately not pulled in:

File Role
index.js locale ref, t(slug, params), setLocale, normalizeTag, pluralCategory, and the navi.locale storage helpers
messages/en.js, uk.js, ru.js flat dictionaries, the same slugs in all three
  • t() interpolates {param} and falls back to the English string when the chosen language has no slug yet (or to the slug itself when nobody has it).
  • Plurals are dictionaries ({ one, few, many, other }) driven only by params.n; ru/uk use one/few/many, en uses one/other.
  • A slug is <area>.<name> and an area is a screen or a component group — settings.*, sidebar.*, messages.*, chat.*, artifacts.*, ui.*, profile.*, app.*. Slugs are shared with the other gnexus services where they mean the same thing.
  • Four areas are vocabulary rather than screens and are filled in as the screens that need them are translated: common.* (save / cancel / delete / revoke…), col.* (table headers), confirm.* (dialog titles and texts) and toast.* (titles of the notifications that pop up after an action).
  • SUPPORTED_LOCALES is the single list: adding a language means adding messages/<code>.js there, plus navi/locales.py on the backend (and the same slug in navi_users.locale_override constraints on the client side).
  • Lists of options or nav items must be computed, not module-level constants, or their labels freeze in the language that was active at import.

The backend side is navi/locales.py (normalize_locale, effective_locale), mirroring the frontend's normalisation: en-US/en_US → en, anything not shipped → None.

Translation status

The framework and the language block shipped first; from there the interface is translated area by area, biggest first, one commit per area. An area not yet done is hard-coded English and looks exactly as it did before — the two kinds of screen sit side by side without either noticing.

Area Strings Status
settings.* 125 (+ 41 in common.*, col.*, confirm.*, toast.*) done
artifacts.* 45 (+ 11 in col.*, 4 in common.*) done
sidebar.* ~29 pending
messages.* ~27 pending
chat.* ~21 pending
ui.* ~20 pending

A slug can reach t() in three shapes — a plain literal, one arm of a ternary (t(server.has_key ? 'settings.mcpKeyPlaceholder' : …)) and a template literal — so counting occurrences means walking the whole argument list of every t( call rather than its first quoted string. The remaining strings are counted in templates (text nodes, placeholder, title, aria-label, label, alt) plus keyed strings in <script setup>.

The settings screen keeps a single settings.* area with panel-prefixed names (settings.keysTitle, settings.mcpTitle), rather than one area per panel: that is what the other gnexus clients do, and a slug has to be greppable from the screen it belongs to.

Backend-generated text (tool results, system prompts, WS event payloads) is still English and is out of scope for now — the interface language does not change what the agent answers.