Translations / i18n

i18n, language specific configurations and the translation files

Translations / i18n

Language files
- Authentication screens
Adding a new language
AM/PM format
Validate your changes
Check for missing translations
Finalization

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Kimai can be localized to any language and is already translated to Arabic, Czech, Danish, German, German (Swiss), Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Basque, Persian, Finnish, Faroese, French, Hebrew, Croatian, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian (Bokmål), Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Slovakian, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese (traditional), Chinese (simplified)

Feel free to send your self-made language files or contributing to the weblate project below – we’re looking for translators and would appreciate your support!

Language	Status
Arabic
Basque
Chinese
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Esperanto
Faroese
Finnish
French
German
German (Swiss)
Greek
Hebrew
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Romanian
Russian
Slovakian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese

Languages and translations in Kimai are configurable. Read below how to add a new language and configure the output formats for date and time values.

Language files

We try to separate translations in logical units, in order to make it easier to identify the location of application messages.

If you add a new key, you have to add it at least in the en version (as english is the fallback language for all missing keys in any language)
It’s very likely that you want to edit the file messages as it holds the most important application translations

The files in translations/ as a quick overview:

about - the about screen with license information
actions - the “action” dropdowns in all data-tables
email - contents for the system emails generated by Kimai (eg. user registration and password reset)
daterangepicker - the date range picker dialog to choose a timeframe in screens with data-tables
exceptions - error pages and exception handlers
flashmessages - success and error messages (alerts), which will be shown after submitting data
invoice-calculator - invoice calculator types (see Adding invoice calculator in developers-section)
invoice-numbergenerator - invoice calculator (see Adding invoice-number generator in developers-section)
invoice-renderer - holds translations of all invoice templates (read more)
messages - most of the visible application translations (like menu, buttons and forms)
plugins - the plugin screen
system-configuration - all system configuration, which can be changed through the UI
tags - the tags administration screen
teams - the team administration screen
validators - related to violations/validation of submitted form data (or API calls)

If you apply changes to any files mentioned on this page, you have to clear the cache.

Authentication screens

The authentication screens (login, registration, register account) are translated through the theme bundle which is used in Kimai. The bundle can be found here and the translations in this directory.

When you create a new translation, please open a Pull Request in this repository as well.

Adding a new language

In the next section I will explain how to add a new language with the (not existing) locale xx.

Add translations

Copy each translation from it’s english version translations/*.en.xlf and rename them to translations/*.xx.xlf.

Adjust the target-language attributes in the file header, as example for the new file exceptions.xx.xlf:

<file source-language="en" target-language="xx" datatype="plaintext" original="exceptions.en.xlf">`

Adding a language variant

For a language variant xx_YY, the fallback will always be the base language xx (eg. de for de_CH).

Only some specific keys may need to be changed for this variant and its possible to add only the respective files like i.e. translations/messages.de_CH.xlf including only the changed translations:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xliff version="1.2" xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:xliff:document:1.2">
    <file source-language="de" target-language="de-CH" datatype="plaintext" original="messages.en.xlf">
        <body>
            <trans-unit resname="action.close">
                <source>action.close</source>
                <target>Schliessen</target>
            </trans-unit>
        </body>
    </file>
</xliff>

Configure locale formats

Adjust the file config/packages/kimai.yaml and add the language (or the language variant) settings below the key kimai.languages:

kimai:
    languages:
        # copy all settings from 'en' and adjust them to your language
        xx:
            date_time_type: 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm'
            date_type: 'yyyy-MM-dd'
            date: 'Y-m-d'
            date_time: 'm-d H:i'
            duration: '%%h:%%m h'

This is not necessary if your language uses the same configuration like en, which will be used as fallback. You only have to overwrite the keys that are different, so if you new language xx only has a different duration format, then adding this is sufficient:

kimai:
    languages:
        # copy all settings from 'en' and adjust them to your language
        xx:
            duration: '%%h hours and %%m minutes'

Register locale

Add the new locale (or the locale variant) in the file config/services.yaml at parameters.app_locales divided by a pipe:

parameters:
    locale: en
    app_locales: en|de|ru|it|xx

Import frontend locales

You can skip this step, we will do it with when we test your changes.

Make sure the new locale is included in the frontend dependencies. For example Kimai includes moment.js, which ships its own translations. Kimai ONLY compiles the moment.js locales which are needed. Check and adapt the JS files in the assets/ directory:

app.js

const Moment = require('moment');
global.moment = Moment;
require('moment/locale/xx');

calendar.js

require('fullcalendar');
require('fullcalendar/dist/locale/xx');

Be careful with the naming of language variants, in JS the variants are written like xx-yy, not xx_YY. To be sure please check the moment.js locales.

Number formats

The number formats on the Kimai frontend as well as in the invoices are defined by the frontend locales. If you get wrong decimal separator or thousands separator keys, please import the correct frontend locale as described above.

Date and time formats

Kimai uses configurations from kimai.yaml to format the values in the frontend. It also uses the configurations to convert between javascript components (e.g. the date-picker) and the PHP backend, so they must create the same output.

AM/PM format

Kimai uses the 24-hour format by default but can be switched to use AM/PM instead, please read the AM/PM format documentation to find out how.

Validate your changes

This will validate if the technical changes are okay / if the changed and new files can be used by Kimai:

bin/console lint:xliff translations

Check for missing translations

You can search for missing keys by issuing this command (replace xx with your locale):

bin/console debug:translation --only-missing de

bin/console translation:update --dump-messages --force de

Finalization

Sent in a PR with your changes
Update the documentation, which states all available translations