Introduction

A language's locale is the perfect way, to inform a system about a language. However, they are hard to understand for humans. So, more than often you will need to convert a locale into a readable output e.g. "English" or "German".

But wait there is no language name supported in any translation service method or even the database! So how do we manage to translate a locale into a readable name?

Well, this will be done through our i18n::languages.{locale} vendor translations.

Get Language Translation

Use the i18n_lang() helper function, to translate a locale into a readable string for humans:

i18n_lang('en_US');

This method expects the locale e.g. "en_US" and tries to translate it (using a key like i18n::languages.en_US). If the key is missing then it falls back to the locale ("en_US").

You could use the translations within the regular translation methods. However, this may lead to a problem since languages that have not been translated will return the key which is still even harder to read:

__('i18n::languages.en_US');

Translate Languages

File Driver

Create a new languages.php file within the lang/vendor/i18n/{locale}/ directory:

return [
    'de_CH' => 'Swiss German',
];

That's it you already translated those locales in a given locale (here english).

Database Driver

Without Existing Translations

If you don't have any translations loaded into the database or don't care if the translations may be overwritten then you should use the i18n:sync artisan command to synchronize drivers. But before you do that create the translations as described for the file driver.

WARNING

Whenever you sync the file driver into the database it will overwrite existing translations in the database. So be careful when you synchronize drivers.

After creating the translation file use the sync artisan command:

php artisan i18n:sync "file" "database"

Confirm with yes if you would like to sync all translations in all languages. Otherwise use the third argument to determine the locale you want to use:

php artisan i18n:sync "file" "database" "en"

With Existing Translations

If you can delete all translation files and directories you don't need or want to be overwritten and do the same as without existing translations.

Otherwise, you should use the artisan command meant to create or update a translation:

php artisan i18n:set-translation "i18n::languages.en" "en" "English"

Or you could also use the setTranslation() method within the I18n service.