Translationstxt

Translationstxt is a plain text file format used to store translations for software localization. It is typically organized as a simple key-value mapping, where each line associates a source string or identifier with its translated text in a target language. The format emphasizes human readability and ease of editing with standard text editors, making it common in smaller projects or in workflows that favor lightweight localization assets.

Structure and syntax: The conventional approach uses a key followed by an equals sign and the translated string, for example greeting=Hello in English. Lines starting with a comment character (such as # or ;) are ignored. Blank lines may separate sections, and some implementations support context prefixes in the key (for example main.greeting). Some variants also allow multi-line translations through continuation lines or escaping.

Language and plural forms: Typically, a separate translationstxt file is created per language, with the locale code reflected in the file name. The format provides no universal standard for pluralization, so projects often encode plural variants with distinct keys or suffixes, relying on their own runtime rules.

Usage and tooling: Translationstxt files are easy to integrate into build scripts, version control, and lightweight localization workflows. They can be parsed by custom scripts or by tools that expect a simple text key-value format. Editors and search tools can operate on them without specialized software.

Advantages and limitations: Advantages include simplicity, portability, and readability. Limitations include a lack of standardized metadata (such as language or author), no strict schema for nested structures, and potential ambiguity if keys are not carefully managed.

See also: i18n, localization, gettext, po files, json, yaml.