Translate

translate — fill missing .po translations with a cheap model

The www site is a single-catalog Lingui project: locales/{locale}/www.po. Instead of running every string through the expensive main model, a deterministic script finds every empty msgstr, chunks them into jobs, Haiku subagents translate the chunks (invoked with model: "haiku" so the main model only orchestrates), and a deterministic merge script writes them back — no model in the write path. Input → output: empty msgstr in locales/{locale}/www.po → filled msgstr.

Announce at start: "Using the translate skill — filling missing .po translations via Haiku subagents."

Scope: every locales/<code>/www.po on disk except the source en (so no shipped catalog is left half-filled). Never overwrites an existing translation — only empty msgstr are touched.

Step 1 — Extract missing translations into chunked jobs

node node_modules/@lingui/cli/dist/lingui.js extract          # refresh catalogs from source strings
node .claude/skills/translate/scripts/extract-missing.mjs     # scan → chunk jobs

(Use the node …/lingui.js extract form rather than npm run lingui:extract if the sandbox denies the .bin/lingui shim; both do the same thing — lingui extract --clean.)

Read the printed summary. It prints total missing, chunk count, and per-locale counts, then writes .ai/scratch/translate/manifest.json plus one input file per chunk under .ai/scratch/translate/in/.

• If the output contains NOTHING_TO_TRANSLATE → STOP, report "no missing translations". Do not run later steps.

Chunk size defaults to 40. For this small site one chunk per locale is fine and keeps the subagent count low — set TRANSLATE_CHUNK_SIZE=300 to get a single chunk per locale.

Step 2 — Start the live progress watcher, then fan out subagents

First launch the background watcher once (Bash tool, run_in_background: true):

node .claude/skills/translate/scripts/progress.mjs --watch

It reports chunks done/total · strings done/total (%) with a per-locale breakdown, updating as each subagent writes its out/ file. It stops itself when Step 5 writes the .done marker.

Then read .ai/scratch/translate/manifest.json — an array of { chunk, in, out, locale, catalog, langLabel, count }.

For every entry, dispatch an Agent with model: "haiku" (subagent type general-purpose). Dispatch in batches of up to 10 per message (multiple tool_use blocks in one message) so they run concurrently; use run_in_background: false so the batch completes before you move on. After each batch, run a one-shot snapshot:

node .claude/skills/translate/scripts/progress.mjs

Use this exact prompt, substituting the entry's in and out absolute paths:

You are a professional software-localization translator for a manufacturing operating system marketing site.

Read the input file (JSON) at this absolute path:
<manifest entry `in`>

It is: { "locale", "langLabel", "catalog", "items": [ { "msgid", "note?" } ] }.
Translate every item's `msgid` from English into the language named by `langLabel`.

RULES — follow exactly:
1. Preserve every placeholder EXACTLY: `{0}`, `{name}`, `{count}`, etc. Never
   translate, rename, reorder-away, or drop a placeholder token.
2. For ICU syntax like `{0, plural, one {…} other {…}}`, keep the structure,
   keywords (`plural`, `select`, `one`, `other`, `=0`, `#`) and braces intact;
   translate ONLY the human words inside each `{…}` branch.
3. Preserve leading/trailing spaces, capitalization intent, and punctuation.
   Keep an ALL-CAPS source label ALL-CAPS in the target where the script allows.
4. Do NOT translate brand names (Carbon, Onshape, Xero, Slack…), acronym codes
   (ERP, MRP, MES, QMS, BOM, CAPA, RFQ…), code identifiers, or URLs.
5. Preserve embedded newlines (\n) in multi-line values.
6. Use `note` only as context for a placeholder; never include it in the output.

OUTPUT — write ONLY a JSON object (create/overwrite) to this absolute path:
<manifest entry `out`>

It maps each input `msgid` (exact original English key, unchanged) to its
translation, e.g. { "Sales orders": "Pedidos de venta" }. Every input item must
be a key. No commentary. Then reply only: DONE.

Do NOT trust the subagent's reply count — the merge script in Step 3 is the source of truth for completeness.

Step 3 — Merge deterministically and verify

node .claude/skills/translate/scripts/merge-translations.mjs

Read its output:

• Merged: N filled, M unmatched — unmatched means the model returned a key that no longer matches an empty msgid (usually it altered the key); skipped.
• Remaining empty msgstr in targeted catalogs: R.
• Missing/invalid chunk outputs — chunks whose out file is absent or bad JSON.

Step 4 — Retry until dry (max 3 rounds total)

If a whole locale keeps failing, lower the chunk size for that round: TRANSLATE_CHUNK_SIZE=15 node .claude/skills/translate/scripts/extract-missing.mjs.

Step 5 — Normalize and recompile

touch .ai/scratch/translate/.done     # stops the background progress watcher
node node_modules/@lingui/cli/dist/lingui.js compile   # regenerate locales/*/www.mjs from the filled .po

Unlike carbon, this repo commits the compiled locales/*/www.mjs runtime catalogs, so recompiling is required for the new translations to actually render.

Step 6 — Verify nothing is left

The merge script's Remaining … : 0 is authoritative. Optionally double-check:

for d in locales/*/; do loc=$(basename "$d"); [ "$loc" = en ] && continue; \
  echo "$loc: $(grep -c '^msgstr ""$' "$d/www.po") empty"; done

Every non-en locale should report 1 (only the catalog header's empty msgstr ""). Anything higher means real strings are still missing → back to Step 4 if under the 3-round cap, else report residual and STOP.

Step 7 — Clean up scratch (always, even on partial/failed runs)

rm -rf .ai/scratch/translate

Leaving in/, out/, and manifest.json behind risks a stale chunk merging on the next run. (extract-missing.mjs also wipes this dir at the start of every run, but clean up here too so the tree is tidy.)

Output

Filled msgstr values in locales/{locale}/www.po plus recompiled locales/{locale}/www.mjs. Commit only if the user asks. Scratch under .ai/scratch/translate/ is disposable.

Done when

• merge-translations.mjs reports Remaining empty msgstr … : 0 (or the residual is reported after 3 rounds).
• lingui compile has regenerated the .mjs catalogs.
• Only msgstr lines changed in the .po diff (no msgid touched): git diff --no-color locales | grep -E '^\+' | grep -vE '^\+msgstr|^\+\+\+' is empty.
• .ai/scratch/translate has been removed.

Failure → action