The count-string gate only knew {count} and {n}, the params t() picks a
plural form by. A quantity named anything else kept one form in every
language and passed: Russian read "Все {days} дней" for 2 days and
"{objects} объектов" for 3 objects, Greek "{minutes} λεπτά" for 1 minute.
Twelve such en strings become plural groups with their forms in all 27
locales, the quantity renamed to {count}: the trip length limit, the
chat image limit, the API key limit, the storage move prompt and its
reclaimable line, the Dawarich wish rule and suggestion duration, the
road trip lateness warnings, and the road trip echo and window texts.
Their callers pass the count as a number; the storage panels used to
pass it as a string, which no form is picked by. The reclaimable line
loses its dash for a comma in every locale while it is rewritten.
i18n-parity now treats the quantity names in QUANTITY_PARAMS ({days},
{minutes}, {objects}, {max} and the like) like {count}. The four strings
where the number is followed by nothing but a unit symbol (the Dawarich
durations, the upload size limit) go on NOT_PLURAL with that reason.
Two holes let English through the ratchet unseen.
A plural form en has no key for (Russian .few and .many, Arabic .two)
was compared with en's value for that same key, which never exists, so a
locale could copy en's text into exactly the forms a new plural group
needs and the count stayed put. Such a form is now compared with every
form en spells out for the group. A form en does declare keeps the exact
comparison: Italian "{count} file" is the Italian plural, not a copy of
en's "{count} file".
The // same-as-en marker excused any value in a Latin-script locale, so
one comment waved a whole copied sentence through. It is honoured only
on a value holding a single plain word, the case shared/CLAUDE.md
already describes. No locale carries the marker today, so nothing that
passed before fails now; the counts are unchanged.
The ratchet excused any value equal to en that held at most one plain
word, so "Settings", "Appearance", "Readability" or "Users" copied into
another locale were never counted, Japanese and Arabic included. Buttons,
tabs and section titles are mostly one word, so a feature could still add
26 English copies of its labels and stay green.
An identical value is now excused only when nothing ordinary is left
after dropping placeholders, markup, addresses, a listed set of product
names (BRAND_NAMES, which now holds one-word names such as Atlas, Immich
and Mapbox) and unit symbols (UNITS). A word that really is the locale's
own, German "Status" or French "Transport", carries a `// same-as-en`
marker on its declaration, which the catalogue reader now reports. The
marker is honoured only in Latin-script locales: a Latin word left in
Japanese or Russian is English whatever it says. Every locale folder
must be on LATIN_LOCALES or NON_LATIN_LOCALES, so a new language cannot
pass the rule unclassified.
The baseline is re-recorded from the narrower rule: the unmarked copies
go from 1252 to 3238, the marked fallbacks stay at 3157, and no entry
went down. This is the measured state under the new rule, not a raised
gate; translating, or marking a word that is genuinely the same, lowers
it with --update as before.
Parity proves a locale has every key, not that the key holds the
locale's language: copying the en string passes it, so a feature could
add 26 English copies and stay green. Nothing counted them either. Today
the locales hold 3157 strings marked `// en-fallback` and 1252 unmarked
values identical to en.
scripts/i18n-untranslated.mjs counts both per locale and file and holds
them at scripts/i18n-untranslated-baseline.json, recorded from today's
tree. i18n-parity --strict runs it, so the existing CI step enforces it.
The two counts are separate on purpose: dropping a marker without
translating moves the string from one count to the other and still
fails. --update lowers the baseline to the current counts and never
raises an entry. A missing or malformed baseline, a locale lacking one
of en's files or a value the reader cannot parse is an error, not a
pass.
An identical value is not counted when it reads the same in every
language: after dropping placeholders, markup, URLs, e-mail addresses,
paths and a short list of multi-word names (Google Maps, Home
Assistant), at most one plain word may be left, where acronyms, single
letters and names with an inner capital are not plain words. That
excuses "{count} km", "GPX", "OAuth" and "Budget" and keeps "Source
code" counted.
BudgetPanel titled its add button with budget.addCategory (since April)
and the trip form labelled its cover remove button with common.remove
(since August). Neither key was ever in en, and t() returns an unknown
key unchanged, so both rendered as the raw key in every language. Both
are added to all 27 locales.
Locale parity compares the locales with en, never en with the code, so
nothing could catch this. client/scripts/i18n-keys.mjs (npm run
lint:i18n-keys) now resolves every literal key src/ names against en:
the first argument of t(), tHtml() and tr() (both sides of a conditional
included), <TransHtml html>, the fallback of translateApiError and any
*Key property or prop. A template key, a prefix with the rest appended
and the help registry's key builders pass when their fixed parts match
an en key; the one template with no fixed part is on an allow-list that
names the keys it resolves to, and an entry nothing uses fails. With
--unused it lists the en keys nothing reaches, as information only.
en is read with shared/scripts/i18n-catalog.mjs, a reader for the
locale tables as text that the parity tooling will share. It refuses a
value that is not one string literal instead of skipping the key.
Maurice