Translations

Translations localize the notifications you send with Knock.

Get started

To get started, enable translations for your account. Go to “Settings” under your account name in the left sidebar and click “Enable translations”.

Next you'll need to set a default locale. Knock uses the default locale when it can't find a translation for a given recipient’s locale.

Once you've set your default locale, you should see a new “Translations” page under “Developers” in the sidebar. This is where you’ll be working with your translations.

Basic usage

Translations are JSON objects that contain the text for your messages in various locales. For example, let’s say you have a customer order notification that you want to localize for French and English users.

Once you have those translations created for the en and fr locales, you can reference their translation strings in your message templates using the t filter:

Your users must have a locale property set for the helper to find translations in their locale, otherwise Knock will use the default locale. You can set a user's locale with the identify endpoint.

Translation methods: filter vs. tag

There are two methods available to you to translate your message templates: the t filter and the t tag.

We cover how to use the t filter and t tag in more detail below.

Using the t filter

You can use t filter to reference your translations from within a message template. The t filter also allows you to use variables, other filters, and special pluralization rules.

Variables and interpolation

You can use variable interpolation in your translations.

You can pass variables to the t filter:

Pluralization

Translations support pluralization rules. When you pass the count variable to a translation, it looks for pluralization keys in your translation. Those keys are zero, one, and other. You don’t need to reference these in the template. If you pass the count variable, it will evaluate it and choose one for you.

To pluralize content in a message template, pass the count variable:

• If the count is 0, it will choose zero, unless zero does not exist and then it will use other.
• 1 corresponds to one, and everything else will fall under others.

Other filters in combination

You can still use other filters in combination with t but you’ll use them after you use the t filter.

For example, to titlecase a translation:

Namespaced translations

When you create a translation, you can supply an optional “namespace.” The namespace helps organize translations of the same locale so you can keep similar concepts together. Below you'll see examples of how to reference namespaced translations from your message templates.

Let's start with a translation with a namespace of shipping:

To access the contents of the shipping translation in your message template you’ll reference the namespace before the key followed by a colon (”:”):

This can be helpful if you use the canceled key else where in your translations so that there isn’t a collision. For example, if you had a payments translation like this:

You would reference it with the payments namespace as well:

And if you had a translation that wasn’t namespaced, say the en translation, you would simply use the key alone. All together in a template, it would look like this:

Nested translations

You can create whatever JSON structure you need to hold your translations.

Given the following translation:

You can access the content with dot-syntax like this:

The same goes for namespaced translations. If the above translation was in a translation named services , you would do the following:

Using the t tag

Knock also provides an editor-friendly t tag which you can use to write templates in your default language. Translation files for any supported languages will be automatically generated in the background when you commit a workflow.

Translation version control

Translations follow the same version control flow in Knock as workflows and layouts. You create them in Development and then promote them to subsequent environments. You can archive translations that are no longer needed.

Locale prioritization

When Knock renders a template for a given user and encounters our t helper, it runs through the following locale prioritization:

1. Language + region (e.g. fr-BE)
2. Language (e.g. fr)
3. Default locale (e.g. en)

Regional locales take precedence over language locales. If a translation is not found in the user’s locale, Knock will fall back to the default locale.

Automate localization with our CLI

In addition to working with translations in the Knock dashboard, you can programmatically create and update translations using the Knock CLI or our Management API.

If you manage your own translation files within your application, you can automate the creation and management of Knock translations so that they always reflect the state of the translation files you keep in your application code.

The Knock CLI supports both JSON and the Portable Object (PO) file formats. When using PO files, the Knock CLI will handle converting between the Knock translation format and the PO format.

The Knock CLI can also be used to commit changes and promote them to production, which means you can automate Knock translation management as part of your CI/CD workflow.

Translation directory structure

When translations are pulled from Knock, they are stored in directories named by their locale codes. Their filename will be their locale code. Any namespaced translations will prepend the namespace to the filename, with . used as a separator.

If you're migrating your local translation files into Knock, you can arrange them using the file structure above and then push them into Knock with a single command using knock translation push --all. Each <locale>.json or <namespace>.<locale>.json file should follow the structure defined here.

You can learn more about automating translation management in the Knock CLI reference. Feel free to contact us if you have questions.

Supported locales

Below is a list of the available locales to choose from for your translations. If you need one added, contact us at support@knock.app.