Jekyll Multiple Languages is an internationalization plugin for Jekyll. It compiles your Jekyll site for one or more languages with a similar approach as Rails does. The different sites will be stored in subfolders with the same name as the language it contains.
The plugin was developed as a utility at Screen Interaction
- 1. Current Release Notice
- 2. Features
- 3. Installation
- 4. Configuration
- 5. Usage
- 7. Example website
- 8. Changelog
- 9. Contributing
- 10. Other Language Plugins
1.4.1 is the current stable release.
Users that update from older versions to 1.4.0 or newer must change their _config.yml
for the plugin to be loaded. Please see the Installation
section bellow for the new string used to load the plugin.
The plugin now works with Jekyll 3, but it's backward compatible with Jekyll 2. Please note that it was only tested with Jekyll 2.5.3 and 3.1.3.
The support for Octopress is dropped, but the plugin should still work with it since Octopress core is Jekyll. Octopress 3 now has its own multi languages plugin: https://github.com/octopress/multilingual
- Works with Jekyll 2.5.3 and 3.1.3
- Supports multiple languages with the same code base.
- Supports all template languages that your Liquid pipeline supports.
- Uses Liquid tags in your HTML for including translated strings.
- Compiles the site multiple times for all supported languages into separate subfolders.
- Works with the --watch flag turned on and will rebuild all languages automatically.
- Contains an example website, thanks to @davrandom
- Supports translated keys in YAML format
- Supports translated template files
- Supports translated links
This plugin is available as a Ruby gem, https://rubygems.org/gems/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin.
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin'
And then execute: $ bundle install
Or install it yourself as: $ gem install jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin
To activate the plugin add it to the Jekyll _config.yml
file, under the gems
option:
gems:
- jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin
See the Jekyll configuration documentation for details.
- Download the repository with Git or your preferred method.
- Inside your Jekyll
_plugins
folder, create a new folder calledjekyll-multiple-languages-plugin
. - Copy or link the directory
lib
, that is inside the downloaded repository, into your_plugins/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin
folder of your Jekyll project.
If your Jekyll project is in a git repository, you can easily manage your plugins by utilizing git submodules.
To install this plugin as a git submodule:
$ git submodule add git://github.com/screeninteraction/jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin.git _plugins/multiple-languages
To update:
$ cd _plugins/multiple-languages
$ git pull origin master
Add the languages available in your website into your _config.yml (obligatory):
languages: ["sv", "en", "de", "fr"]
The first language in the array will be the default language, English, German and French will be added into separate subfolders.
To avoid redundancy, it is possible to exclude files and folders from being copied to the localization folders.
exclude_from_localizations: ["javascript", "images", "css"]
In code, these specific files should be referenced via baseurl_root
. E.g.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ "/css/bootstrap.css" | prepend: site.baseurl_root }}"/>
Create a folder called _i18n
and add sub-folders for each language, using the same names used on the languages
setting on the _config.yml
:
- /_i18n/sv.yml
- /_i18n/en.yml
- /_i18n/de.yml
- /_i18n/fr.yml
- /_i18n/sv/pagename/blockname.md
- /_i18n/en/pagename/blockname.md
- /_i18n/de/pagename/blockname.md
- /_i18n/fr/pagename/blockname.md
To add a translated string into your web page, use one of these liquid tags:
{% t key %}
or
{% translate key %}
This will pick the correct string from the language.yml
file during compilation.
The language.yml files are written in YAML syntax which caters for a simple grouping of strings.
global:
swedish: Svenska
english: English
pages:
home: Home
work: Work
To access the english
key, use one of these tag:
{% t global.english %}
or
{% translate global.english %}
You can also access translated strings by accesing the site.translations
hash, this allows you to loop trough your translations within Liquid:
{% for item in site.translations[site.lang]["my_nested_yaml_collection"] %}
<p>{{ item[0] }} -> {{ item[1] }}</p>
{% endfor %}
The plugin also supports using different markdown files for different languages using the liquid tag:
{% tf pagename/blockname.md %}
or
{% translate_file pagename/blockname.md %}
This plugin has exactly the same support and syntax as the Jekyll's built in liquid tag:
{% include file %}
so plugins that extend its functionality should be picked up by this plugin as well.
To use localized pages with permalinks, you must provide a default permalink
and the language specific permalinks, for example, permalink_fr
for French.
To translate links, you must also add a unique namespace on the YAML front matter along with the permalinks.
Example:
---
layout: default
namespace: team
permalink: /team/
permalink_fr: /equipe/
---
And then you can use the translate link liquid tag like this:
<a href="{% tl team %}"> <!--This link will return /team if we are in the English version of the website and /fr/equipe if it's the French version</a>-->
<a href="{% tl team fr %}"> <!--This link will always return /fr/equipe</a>-->
or the longer version:
<a href="{% translate_link team %}"> <!--This link will return /team if we are in the English version of the website and /fr/equipe if it's the french version</a>-->
<a href="{% translate_link team fr %}"> <!--This link will always return /fr/equipe</a>-->
Sometimes it is convenient to add keys even in template files. This works in the exact same way as in ordinary files, however sometimes it can be useful to include a different string in different pages even if they use the same template.
A perfect example is this:
<html>
<head>
<title>{% t page.title %}</title>
</head>
</html>
So how can I add different translated titles to all pages? Don't worry, it's easy. The Multiple Languages plugin supports Liquid variables, as well as strings so, define a page variable in your page definition
---
layout: default
title: titles.home
---
and <title>{% t page.title %}</title>
will pick up the titles.home
key from language.yml
titles:
home: "Home"
This plugin gives you the variables
{{ page.lang }}
and
{{ site.baseurl_root }}
to play with in your template files.
This allows you to create solutions like this:
{% if site.lang == "sv" %}
{% capture link1 %}{{ site.baseurl_root }}en{{ page.url}}{% endcapture %}
<a href="{{ link1 }}" >{% t global.english %}</a>
{% elsif site.lang == "en" %}
{% capture link2 %}{{ site.baseurl_root }}{{ page.url }}{% endcapture %}
<a href="{{ link2 }}" >{% t global.swedish %}</a>
{% endif %}
This snippet will create a link that will toggle between Swedish and English. A more detailed description of the variables used follows:
Name | Value | Example |
---|---|---|
site.lang | The language used in the current compilation stage | en |
site.baseurl | Points to the root of the site including the current language | http://foo.bar/en |
site.baseurl_root | Points to the root of the page without the language path | http://foo.bar |
page.url | The current page's relative URL to the baseurl | /a/sub/folder/page/ |
Depending on the theme, or your preferences, you need to create a "template" page in the root folder or in a folder (ex. _pages
). Inside each page (in this example an about.md
) you should have at least the following in the header and body:
---
layout: page
title: About
permalink: /about/
---
{% translate_file about/about.md %}
Inside each of the language folders, you should create mirror pages to provide the actual content for that language (ex. i18n/es/about/about.md
). Make sure to erase the headers from those md files, or else your site will break.
This repository has an example website where you can test the plugin.
After downloading the repository, get into the example
directory and run: bundle install
to install the newest version of Jekyll (change the Gemfile to install another version), the plugin, and all other dependencies.
Then run bundle exec jekyll serve
to start the Jekyll server. Using your web browser, access the address http://localhost:4000
.
Imagine you want to add German pages on the test website. First, add a new language to the list of languages on _config.yml
:
languages: ["it", "en", "es", "de"]
Create a new folder for the language under the _i18n
folder and add a markdown file containing the translation, just like on the other language folders, and you're done.
Let's say you want to create an about page for the example website, you will create an about.html
page on the root of the website (same place as index.html), with this:
---
layout: page
title: About
permalink: /about/
---
{% translate_file about/about.md %}
Then, create a file named about.md
under _i18n/en
with the English content. Repeat this for the other languages (_i18n/es/about.md ...). When running the website, visit the address http://localhost:4000/about
to see the English version, http://localhost:4000/es/about
for the Spanish one, etc.
- 1.4.2
- Exposes the
site.translations
hash containing the translated strings to Liquid.
- Exposes the
- 1.4.1
- Fixes a bug during site regeneration where translation paths were being nested based on wrongly set Jekyll variables.
- 1.4.0
- Support for Jekyll 3, thanks to @pedrocarmona
- How to create pages documentation, thanks to @elotroalex
- Many bug fixes
- Code refactoring, cleanup and reorganization
- Files and folders reorganization
- Improved and fixed issues on the example website
- Improvements and fixes on documentations
- Improved license files
- 1.3.0
- Support for localized links and custom permalinks, thanks to @jasonlemay
- Support for excluding posts from translation, thanks to @ctruelson
- 1.2.9
- Bug fix when excluding files from translation, again thanks to @h6
- 1.2.8
- Support for excluding files from translation, thanks to @h6
- 1.2.7
- Support for Jekyll 2.5+, thanks to @caxy4
- 1.2.6
- Added fallback to default language, thanks to @agramian
- 1.2.5
- Fixed a bug when global variables weren't as global as expected
- 1.2.4
- Fixed a bug when changes in .yml files got lost during live reload.
- 1.2.3
- Much, much, much faster compilation when lots of translated strings.
- 1.2.2
- Supports translated posts in Octopress
- 1.2.1
- Supports writing translated posts in Jekyll
- Supports translated .yml files in Octopress
- 1.2.0
- Renamed the project to jekyll-multiple-languages-plugin
- 1.1.2
- Support for both variables and strings in
translate_file
- Support for both variables and strings in
- 1.1.1
- Fixed documentation
- 1.1.0
- Pull request that removed dirty forward slash from URLs
- 1.0.0
- First release
- Fork it
- Create your feature branch (
git checkout -b my-new-feature
) - Commit your changes (
git commit -am 'Add some feature'
) - Push to the branch (
git push origin my-new-feature
) - Create a new Pull Request
User | Contribution |
---|---|
@pedrocarmona | support for Jekyll 3 |
@elotroalex | added a how to create page to README |
@mohamnag | permalink generation bug fix |
@jasonlemay | support for localized links |
@ctruelson | support for excluding posts |
@Bersch | better paths |
@Davrandom | plugin usage example |
@agramian | fallback to default language |
@h6 | exclude files from translation |
@leoditommaso | update the example page |
@kurtsson from Screen Interaction (http://screeninteraction.com)
Bellow is a list of other language plugins for Jekyll (2016/05/28):
Seems to be maintained:
- Jekyll Language Plugin
- Polyglot
- Jekyll Multiple Languages
- Octopress Multilingual
- jekyll-i18n_tags
- jekyll-task-i18n
Seems to be unmaintained / abandoned:
- Jekyll-Multilingualism
- Jekyll::Languages
- Jekyll I18n support
- jekyll-multilingual
- jekyll-msgcat
- jekyll-localize
- Jekyll i18n Filter
- jekyll-localization
- Jekyll i18n
This plugin will in the future try to merge all pertinent features of all those plugins into it.