Tutorial - Internationalization of React Native apps

In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to add internationalization to an existing application in React Native. The React Native tutorial is largely similar to the one for React, and we highly recommend you check out that tutorial first because it covers installation, setup and other topics. Here we will cover parts that are relevant for React Native and hopefully answer all questions you may have.

Note

The latest version of @lingui/react working out-of-the-box for React Native on Android is 2.2. Newer versions depend on the Intl object which is not available on the JavaScriptCore that is used on Android by default. See the JSC build scripts for Android for possible solution or use the Intl polyfill.

If you’re looking for a working solution, check out the demo on Expo. The source code is available here.

Let’s Start

We’re going to translate the following app:

import React from 'react';
import { StyleSheet, Text, View, Alert, SafeAreaView, Button } from 'react-native';

export default class App extends React.Component {
 render() {
   return (
     <Inbox
       username="John"
       markAsRead={this.showAlert}
       messages={[]}
     />
   );
 }

 showAlert = () => {
   Alert.alert('', 'Do you want to set all your messages as read?');
 };
}

const Inbox = ({ messages, markAsRead, username }) => {
 const messagesCount = messages.length;

 return (
   <SafeAreaView style={styles.container}>
     <View style={styles.container2}>
       <Text style={styles.heading}>Message Inbox</Text>

       <Text>
         See all unread messages or
       </Text>
       <Button onPress={markAsRead} title="mark messages as read" />

       <Text>
         {messagesCount === 1
           ? `There's {messagesCount} message in your inbox.`
           : `There are ${messagesCount} messages in your inbox.`}
       </Text>
     </View>

     <Text>{username}.</Text>
   </SafeAreaView>
 );
};

As you can see, it’s a simple mailbox application with only one screen.

Introducing internationalization

Not surprisingly, this part isn’t too different from the React tutorial.

Let’s use the <Trans> macro first. Don’t forget that we need to wrap our root component with the <I18nProvider> so we can set the active language and load catalogs:

Let’s translate the screen heading:

import { I18nProvider } from '@lingui/react'
import { Trans } from '@lingui/macro'
import { i18n } from "@lingui/core"
import { en } from 'make-plural/plurals'

i18n.loadLocaleData('en', { plurals: en })
i18n.load('en', messages)
i18n.activate('en')

<I18nProvider i18n={i18n}>
 <YourRootComponent someProp="someValue" />
</I18nProvider>

// later on somewhere deep in the React component tree:
<Text style={styles.heading}><Trans>Message Inbox</Trans></Text>

This was easy. Now, the next step is to translate the title prop of the <Button> component. But wait a sec, the button expects to receive a string, so we cannot use the <Trans> macro here! Also notice that the Alert.alert call requires a string as well.

Luckily, there is a simple solution: the <I18n> is a render prop component which gives us an i18n prop that we can use like this: i18n._(t`this will be translated`) and the result of such a call is a string. Let’s see how to do this!

Hint

The i18n object is covered in greater detail in the JavaScript tutorial.

Under the hood, <I18nProvider> creates an instance of the i18n object automatically and passes it to <Trans> components through React Context. The <Trans> components then use the instance to get the translations from it. If we cannot use the <Trans> component, we can use the I18n render prop component to get hold of the i18n object ourselves and get the translations from it.

So, we need to do two things: first, we need to setup the <I18nProvider> and then we can use the I18n render prop component, as shown in the following simplified example:

import { I18nProvider } from '@lingui/react'
import { t, Trans } from '@lingui/macro'

<I18nProvider language="en">
  <YourRootComponent someProp="someValue" />
</I18nProvider>

const Inbox = (({ markAsRead }) => {
  return (
    <View>
      <View>
        <Text style={styles.heading}>
          <Trans>Message Inbox</Trans>
        </Text>
        <Trans>See all unread messages or</Trans>
        {/* you can also use the withI18n HOC */}
        <I18n>
          {({ i18n }) => (
            <Button onPress={markAsRead} title={i18n._(t`mark messages as read`)} />
          )}
        </I18n>
    </View>
  );
});

// later on somewhere deep in the React component tree:
<Inbox markAsRead={this.showAlert} />

Note

There are several ways to render translations: You may use the the <Trans> component, the withI18n HOC or the <I18n> component that provides a render prop. The important thing about all of these approaches is that when you change the active language (through the language prop passed to <I18nProvider>), all the components that show translated text will re-render, making sure the UI shows the correct translations. All of these approaches are equivalent in their result.

Internationalization Outside of React Components

Until now, we have covered the <Trans> macro and the <I18n> render prop component. Using them will make sure our components are always in sync with the currently active language.

However, often you’ll need to show localized strings outside of React, for example when you want to show a toast from some business logic code. In that case you’ll also need access to the i18n object, but you don’t want to pass it around from some component’s props. At this point, we need to turn our attention to the @lingui/core package, namely the setupI18n() method which returns an i18n object.

import { setupI18n } from '@lingui/core';

// this file is generated by the cli
import enMessages from './locale/en/messages.js';

// import this constant as get translations from it outside of React
export const i18n = setupI18n({
 language: 'en',
 catalogs: {
   en: enMessages,
 },
});

As explained before, <I18nProvider> creates an instance of the i18n object automatically and passes it to <Trans> components through React Context. Since we created the i18n instance by ourselves, we need to pass it to the <I18nProvider> as a prop. This way we tell it not to create a new instance but use the one we provide, like this:

<I18nProvider i18n={i18n} language="en">
  <YourRootComponent someProp="someValue" />
</I18nProvider>

Now we’re ready to show correctly translated strings anywhere in our app! Just import the i18n object into your non-react code and use it, for example like this: i18n._(t`this will be translated`).

The last remaining piece of the puzzle is changing the active language. The i18n object exposes two methods for that: i18n.load(catalogs) and i18n.activate(language). Just call the two methods, pass the changed i18n object and the new active language to the <I18nProvider> and js-lingui takes care of the rest. It all becomes clear when you take a look at the final code.

Rendering of Translations

As described in the reference, by default, translation components render translation as a text without a wrapping tag. In React Native though, all text must be wrapped in the <Text> component. This means we would need to use the <Trans> component like this:

<Text><Trans>Message Inbox</Trans></Text>

You’ll surely agree the <Text> component looks a little redundant. That’s why the <I18nProvider> component accepts a defaultComponent prop. Just supply the <Text> component as the defaultComponent prop and the previous example can be simplified to:

<Trans>Message Inbox</Trans>

Alternatively, you may override the default locally on the i18n components, using the render prop. This is also documented in the reference.

Nesting Components

It is worth mentioning that the <Trans> macro and <Text> component may be nested, for example to achieve the effect shown in the picture. This is thanks to how React Native handles nested text.

This can be achieved by the following code:

<Trans>
  <Text style={{ fontSize: 20 }}>
    <Text>Concert of </Text>
    <Text style={{ color: 'green' }}>Green Day</Text>
    <Text style={{ fontWeight: 'bold' }}> tonight!</Text>
  </Text>
</Trans>

The extracted string for translation will look like this:

"<0><1>Concert of </1><2>Green Day</2><3> tonight!</3></0>"

The important point here is that the sentence isn’t broken into pieces but remains together - that will allow the translator to deliver a quality result.

Further reading

• @lingui/react reference documentation

• @lingui/cli reference documentation

• Pluralization Guide