Project description: Ghost is currently pretty much UK-based English-language only, and has barely any features to account for timezones, locales, languages, alphabets, keyboard layouts or anything else that isn't UTC/English in either the admin or in themes. Even the USA folks luck out, sorry! All this is set to change with full support for multiple locales and languages across the admin and your blog posts. Throughout the Ghost GitHub, support for all of these sorts of features is referred to as i18n (internationalisation).
Currently, Ghost effectively doesn't work properly unless you're writing in English or something very similar. Throughout the application, from the ember admin, to the API and even down to themes there are things missing which make it hard to use Ghost if you aren't English speaking.
This issue is intended as a placeholder to keep track of all the different places where we know we need to add i18n support so that it becomes possible for anyone to publish content comfortably in their own language and locale.
i18n for Ghost falls into 2 broad categories
1. Publish content in your language/locale
We need to make it possible for anyone to create a blog and publish content which is 100% in their language. This includes extending theme helpers, adding support for non latin-standard chars in URLs and other files, and many other things.
2. Use Ghost in your language/locale
Much less important, it would be great for our users if they could have the admin UI appear in their language, with a tailored layout and specific fonts.
Features and Support
The following is a list of things we know we need to do / make possible / add support for:
Publishing
- Level 1: blog language setting
- Level 2: post language
- customisable permalinks where english words are used
- set
<html lang="?"> - add language output in JSON/LD
- non-latin chars in slugs
- non-latin chars in urls
- non-latin chars when uploading files
- non-latin chars handled by
wordsandcharactersfeatures of excerpt/content helpers - non-latin chars in generated heading
idattributes - non-latin chars supported fully in editor
- customisable permalinks for
/tag/,/author/, and/page/urls - locale dates in themes (moment.js language support)
- different plural structures in the
{{plurals}}helper - extensible rules for what constitutes paragraphs and words in the excerpt and content helpers
extensible rules for what constitutes paragraphs and words in the editor
Admin UI
translate the Admin UI
- locale dates when entering published at date
- register different fonts for use in the admin interface and specifically the editor
- extend the admin interface with layout tweaks for different languages
- install language packs which provide the translations and layout tweaks
- non-latin chars handled by word count and counters on bio/description fields
- ability to include extra character sets in admin via language packs
i18n and Apps
Not all features and support for other languages will exist in core. Different writing systems require very different layouts and as such it should be expected that if your language is significantly different to English, that an App may be required to make Ghost work for you.
The advantage of splitting functionality this way is that we don't have to design one UI that works for all languages and writing systems. Furthermore we don't have to bloat the core of Ghost with features that will only ever be used by one specific group. Language packs which add translations for the Ghost admin UI could also add layout tweaks, better fonts, and other modifications to make Ghost work just as well for other languages as it does for English.
ErisDS
All 17 comments
FormatJS looks like a nice solution for i18n: http://formatjs.io/
halfdan
on 14 Oct 2014
On Discourse they are using Transifex.
On the translator side (I help translating into French), this tool is very nice to use.
And it seems to be free for open source projects.
evantill
on 25 Nov 2014
Transifex seems the best solution. I used it for Wallabag and ownCloud projects. Please create your repo, and I'll be happy to translate Ghost in French & German.
HLFH
on 12 Dec 2014
We're looking for someone to lead up the i18n development project: https://ghost.org/contribute/i18n-lead/ - making it possible to translate the Ghost admin, as well as helping us find solutions to many other i18n related problems listed out in this issue.
ErisDS
on 5 Jan 2015
The source code still references a related setting that is no longer used: forceI18n. Quoting @ErisDS: _鈥渨e haven't ever removed a setting before and it would require a bit of faffing around to check it doesn't have unintended sideeffects if you remove it鈥漘.
So the plan is to let it untouched for now, _鈥渁nd if you guys find a use for the setting, use it, else we'll look to remove it as part of project鈥漘.
coox
on 19 Apr 2015
Anyone & everyone following along with this should read and get involved with the proposals outlined here: https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/5345
ErisDS
on 2 Jun 2015
What is the current status on setting a post as a specific language/locale?
anyong
on 29 Jul 2015
How far away are the i18n support for Ghost?
aludvigsen
on 20 Nov 2015
@aludvigsen The task is marked as stalled in the Trello roadmap.
yusf
on 13 Dec 2015
:+1: Would love this :(
punkeel
on 28 Dec 2015
Don't know if this is an appropriate place for this, but I saw those, who were looking to solve the date language issue on posts. Go figure, this is the workaround:
open core/server/helpers/ghost_head.js and before module.exports = ghost_head; line add something like moment.locale('ru');
faustvault
on 9 Sep 2016
Not sure if this is included in "Level 2: post language" but I would like to be able to have multiple version of a single post in different languages, and Ghost would serve up the appropriate version depending on the user's locale (with the ability to override).
Tyriar
on 18 Sep 2016
I'm agree with @Tyriar. This is the only functionality I missing since I've been on Ghost
mindsers
on 20 Oct 2016
Stopped using Ghost about a year ago due to only being able to use it for English-based sites. Still no progress? :(
Nettsentrisk
on 9 Mar 2017
@Nettsentrisk No progress since November 2012.
HLFH
on 9 Mar 2017
As a Ghost Kickstarter backer I can't help but feeling a little left out not being able to use Ghost in production even once, because of the lack of localization.
yusf
on 9 Mar 2017
I understand the replies here come from a place of frustration and a desire to see this implemented, however the comments here are achieving the opposite effect.
Anyone who comes to this issue with the intention of contributing will be put off by the negativity in the comments. This article does a great job of explaining what it feels like being a maintainer on GitHub. It is extremely demotivating to put in tonnes of work only to have people rock up to GitHub to moan about all the things we haven't done or got wrong.
Moving forward:
This is an enormous issue, relating to 3 different concepts that people commonly mix up:
- translating the admin UI
- localising a theme
- being able to publish content in multiple languages
We have said these aren't features the core team plan to build in the near future, instead looking for people from the community to lead the effort. We had a page on ghost.org dedicated to it for over a year, and we've had an #i18n channel in Slack for even longer.
If you want to see this implemented, then contribute something. Positivity, ideas and encouragement are all contributions. Rally together a group of people who could make this happen, use the tools we've provided and work with us to affect a change.
For now - I am going to close this issue. It serves only as a beacon of frustration for a feature set that does not exist, and that really belongs on https://ideas.ghost.org. If an individual or group wants to work on one of the 3 aspects of locatisation/internationalisation, we can raise a new issue to cover the spec of what they want to build, as happened with #5345.
ErisDS
on 10 Mar 2017
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Stopped using Ghost about a year ago due to only being able to use it for English-based sites. Still no progress? :(