0009. Internationalisation with the umi locale plugin (en-US, pl-PL, fr-FR)

• Status: Accepted (retroactive)
• Date: 2021-09-08

Context and Problem Statement

The panel had to be usable in at least English and Polish (Inferred: Polish customers plus an international open-source audience). The Ant Design Pro template already shipped the umi locale plugin with src/locales/<lang>/*.ts message files and <FormattedMessage> / useIntl().

Considered Options

Not recorded.

Decision Outcome

UI strings go through the umi locale plugin (locale: { antd: true, baseNavigator: true } in config/config.ts, so the language follows the browser). English came with the template; Polish (src/locales/pl-PL*) was added in September 2021 together with a pass that replaced hard-coded strings in components; French was contributed by Pascal Braconnier in April 2023 (PR #751). Per-feature message files (notifications.ts, templates.ts, consultations.ts, …) are added next to each new feature.

Consequences

• Good: new languages can be added without code changes; antd components are localised too.
• Bad: template locales (zh-CN as the configured default, bn-BD, fa-IR, id-ID, ja-JP, pt-BR, zh-TW) remain with only a few template strings each.
• Bad (Inferred): nothing checks key completeness across locales, so gaps show up only at runtime.
• Note: translation strings stored in the API (/api/admin/translations, edited through src/services/escola-lms/translations.ts) are a separate mechanism for the learner front-end.

Evidence

• 1c53acd3 2021-02-26 “initial push” — admin/src/locales/en-US*, template locales.
• f289c4f2 2021-09-08 “Issue/81 (#97)” — admin/src/locales/pl-PL.ts, admin/src/locales/pl-PL/*, components switched to FormattedMessage.
• f76db68e 2023-04-04 “Add fr-FR locales (#751)” — admin/src/locales/fr-FR*.