Languages and right-to-left

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Kept ships in five languages: English, Arabic, French, German and Italian (D204). Arabic is right-to-left, so every screen has to mirror without per-screen overrides. The web app uses Lingui with PO catalogues (D96); the server has its own small typed tables for mail and reports.

Lingui in the web app

apps/web/lingui.config.ts sets the source locale en, the locales en, ar, fr, de, it, and one catalogue per locale at apps/web/src/locales/<locale>/messages.po, extracted from src (tests and routeTree.gen.ts excluded). Catalogues have no line numbers, so they don’t churn on every edit.

apps/web/src/i18n/i18n.ts loads the catalogue of the language in use on demand: each .po is compiled by @lingui/vite-plugin into its own chunk under assets/locales/, cached by the service worker on first use. activateLocale also passes the digit choice into Lingui, so a plural’s # shows ٣ or 3 as the reader chose.

In components, write strings with the macros:

<Trans>Sign in with <bdi>{name}</bdi></Trans>

const { t } = useLingui();
t`Needs a connection`;

Adding a string

Write it with t`…` or <Trans>.
Add its entry to all five catalogues, with a written msgstr in ar, fr, de and it. pnpm --filter @kept/web i18n:extract runs lingui extract --clean, which rewrites all five files and drops obsolete entries. When several changes are in flight on the catalogues, the house practice is to append the new entries by hand instead of running a --clean re-extract, and to commit catalogue changes on their own.
Run the checks below.

A plural in Arabic carries every form, as the existing entries do:

msgid "{0, plural, =0 {no fields} one {# field} other {# fields}}"
msgstr "{0, plural, =0 {بلا حقول} zero {بلا حقول} one {حقل واحد} two {حقلان} few {# حقول} many {# حقلًا} other {# حقل}}"

What the checks enforce

Check	Runs in	Fails when
`scripts/check-i18n.mjs`	`pnpm lint`	A message in the source is missing from any catalogue; a non-English translation is empty; a launch locale is missing from the config; a translation’s shape differs from its source (different placeholders, numbered tags, or number of plural/select arguments)
`scripts/check-i18n-extract.mjs`	ci-local’s `catalogues` step	The real `lingui extract` CLI, run into a scratch copy under `.tmp/`, adds an id the committed catalogues don’t hold, or a committed non-English catalogue has an empty translation
`scripts/check-logical-css.mjs`	`pnpm lint`	A physical side in CSS, a style object or a Tailwind class (below)

A message missing from a catalogue matters: the macro strips the source text in a production build, so a missing message renders as its hashed id, not as English. Neither script checks obsolete entries or moved #: references.

Digits, numbers and dates

The reader picks Eastern (٠١٢٣) or Western digits for Arabic (D143); other languages are always Western. formatLocale in apps/web/src/lib/prefs.ts turns that into ar-u-nu-arab or ar-u-nu-latn. Format numbers and dates through useFormat() in apps/web/src/lib/format.ts (fmt.num, fmt.day, fmt.longDay, fmt.dateTime, fmt.relative), and sizes with useBytes(), never with a bare toLocaleString.

Short IDs, codes, serials, usernames and URLs never go through the formatter. They stay as printed on the label, Western and left-to-right, inside the .ltr class (apps/web/src/styles/index.css: direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: isolate).

Right-to-left rules

Logical CSS only. scripts/check-logical-css.mjs fails on margin-left, padding-right, left:, text-align: right, their camelCase forms in style objects, and Tailwind’s ml-, pr-, left-, border-l, rounded-r, text-left and friends. Use margin-inline-start / ms-, padding-inline-end / pe-, inset-inline-start / start-, border-s, rounded-e, text-start. A line that genuinely needs a physical side (a chart axis) can end with the comment logical-css-ignore and a reason.

Names inside sentences are isolated. A Latin name in an Arabic sentence, or an Arabic one in French, must keep its own direction without turning the sentence around it:

in JSX, wrap the name in <bdi>;
in a string (a toast, an aria-label, a title built with t), use isolate() from apps/web/src/lib/bidi.ts, which wraps it in Unicode’s first-strong isolate marks:

t`Make ${isolate(label)} secret?`

bidi() in the same file gives a <bdi> element for a name inside a <Trans> placeholder, and plainText() strips the marks for comparisons.

Separators come from the formatter. Never write a literal " · " between a line’s parts. Use fmt.sep (from useFormat()) or sep() from apps/web/src/lib/format.ts. In Arabic the separator is the Arabic comma "، ": the dot beside an Eastern digit reads as the zero ٠. A translated message’s " · " is replaced at load time by localiseSeparators, so translators don’t write it; apps/web/src/lib/separator.test.ts checks every Arabic message.

{i > 0 ? fmt.sep : null}

Empty fields. User text fields use dir="auto". While a placeholder shows, the field takes the page’s direction (a rule in index.css), so an Arabic placeholder isn’t laid out left-to-right.

Check every screen in Arabic at 375 px and 1280 px, in light and dark. See UI kit.

Server-side text

The server doesn’t use Lingui:

Mail (apps/server/src/mail/): a typed table per language, keyed by the recipient’s profile locale. English and Arabic are in messages.ts; French, German and Italian in messages-<locale>.ts. A mail kind missing from a language is a type error, and mail.test.ts renders every kind in each. Each language’s chrome sets dir.
Reminders (apps/server/src/notify/words.ts): one wording shared by the email, the push payload and the calendar feed.
The inventory report PDF (apps/server/src/reports/labels.ts): English or Arabic only (D201). The Arabic follows the web catalogue’s wording for terms the app already uses.