Adding a user-facing string

OpenFoot Manager ships in 11 locales. A string that exists only in English is a broken build, not a TODO. This is the project's most frequently violated rule, so follow the steps in order and finish with the tests.

The 11 locales

Source of truth: SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES in src/i18n/index.ts.

Files: src/i18n/locales/<code>.json.

If SUPPORTED_LANGUAGES and this table ever disagree, src/i18n/index.ts wins — read it.

Procedure

1. Find the right key, don't invent a new one

# Is this string, or something close, already translated?
grep -rn "the exact english text" src/i18n/locales/en.json

Keys are nested and namespaced by feature (squad.*, tactics.*, transfers.*, news.*, settings.*). Put the new key where its siblings live. Reusing an existing key beats adding a near-duplicate — but do not reuse a key across contexts where a translator would need different wording (a noun label and a button verb are different keys even when English collapses them).

2. Add it to en.json first

English is the source. Every other locale is validated against its key set.

Use interpolation for anything dynamic — never build a sentence by concatenating translated fragments, because word order differs by language:

// wrong — unassemblable in German or Turkish
"signedFor": "signed for",
// right
"signedFor": "{{player}} signed for {{team}} for {{fee}}"

Pluralisation uses i18next suffixes (_one, _other, and the extra forms ru and cs need). If a count is involved, check how an existing pluralised key in en.json is written and match it.

3. Translate into the other 10 — properly

Add the same key path to cs, de, es, fr, it, pt, pt-BR, ru, tr, zh-CN.

• Keep every interpolation placeholder identical. {{player}} stays {{player}}; only the surrounding text and the word order change.
• pt and pt-BR are genuinely different — European vs Brazilian vocabulary (relvado vs gramado, equipa vs time). Don't copy one into the other.
• Football has established vocabulary in each language. Use the term a fan of that language would use, not a literal translation of the English.
• zh-CN is Simplified Chinese. The font stack in src/App.css has CJK fallbacks — don't remove them.
• If you genuinely cannot produce a confident translation for a locale, say so in your summary rather than shipping English text under a non-English key. The test will catch it anyway.

4. INTENTIONAL_SAME.json — only for terms that truly don't translate

src/i18n/INTENTIONAL_SAME.json allowlists keys whose value is legitimately identical to English: proper nouns, competition names, position abbreviations like GK. Entries are keyed by locale code, or global for all of them.

This is an escape hatch for linguistics, not for unfinished work. If you find yourself adding several keys at once, you are using it wrong.

5. Backend strings are keys, not prose

Rust never emits English text for the player. It emits a translation key, and the frontend resolves it:

• src/utils/backendI18n.ts — the main mapping
• src/utils/backendI18nPlayerEvents.ts — player event messages
• src/utils/backendI18n.legacy.ts — keys kept for old saves

So a new inbox message or news headline generated in ofm_core means: emit the key on the Rust side, map it in backendI18n.ts if the mapping isn't automatic, and add the key to all 11 locale files. src/utils/backendI18n.localeCoverage.test.ts covers this half.

6. Run the gates

npx vitest run src/i18n        # localeCoverage + frontendKeyCoverage + index
npx vitest run src/utils       # backendI18n coverage, if you touched backend keys

• localeCoverage.test.ts — every locale has every en.json key, and no locale silently copies the English string (outside INTENTIONAL_SAME.json).
• frontendKeyCoverage.test.ts — every literal t("…") key in src/ exists in en.json. It parses the TypeScript AST, so typo'd keys fail too.

Then the advisory sweep:

npm run audit:i18n

This command always exits 0. It is a heuristic reporter over both src/ and src-tauri/; read its output and check whether any candidate it lists is a string you just added. A clean run is not a pass — the vitest gates are.

Checklist

• Key added to src/i18n/locales/en.json, in the right namespace
• Real translations added to all 10 other locales
• Interpolation placeholders identical across every locale
• pt and pt-BR translated separately
• INTENTIONAL_SAME.json touched only for genuinely untranslatable terms
• Backend keys mapped in src/utils/backendI18n*.ts if applicable
• npx vitest run src/i18n green
• npm run audit:i18n output read, not just run
• Any new aria-label uses a translated string, not a hardcoded one