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Kibana i18n Proposal - 20170220
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KibanaProposalArchive-7.md

Kibana Globalization

Purpose

  • Provide translation readiness on the Kibana dashboard for view text (user data is a separate issue)
  • An integrated framework for federation of multiple globalization frameworks
  • Framework is an agnostic service which is independent of the underlying globalization frameworks, and therefore consumed by those frameworks instead of the translations directly
  • Provide plug-and-play capability (i.e. code free) for localization engineers when providing translations of different languages
  • Delivered in a phased approach

Architecture Diagram

Design

Phase 1

Purpose

  • Implement the internationalization engine (I18n class) which provides a means to supply translations in a standard format that it not dependent on a localization framework
  • i18n engine manages all locale translations; registering all translations and loading the correct locale when required
  • Translate the Kibana welcome message which proves that the I18n class provides translations as registered for Kibana

Decide Language for Translation Algorithm

  • The algorithm which decides the language for loading translations is as follows:
    1. First, do a direct comparison with the highest priority locale in the HTTP header “accept-language” against the registered translation languages. If comparison found then this is the language returned.
    2. Next, do a partial comparison of this locale whereby you try and get a language code comparison against the registered translation languages. For example, "fr" or "fr-FR" is used for all regions of French if comparison applies. If comparison found then this is the language returned.
    3. Next, repeat step 2 and if need be step 3 for the next highest priority locale in the “accept-language” list.
    4. Continue, until match found in step 2/step 3 or end of the “accept-language” list. If no match found then return empty language.

I18n Class

  • Manages the language translations for Kibana

  • Responsible for loading translated content per language

  • The translations file are JSON files with a flat keyspace, where the keys are unique. This uniqueness between translation plugins could be achieved by prefixing the keys with the plugin name. The key signifies the translation ID which would be referenced in translatable files (like JS, HTML etc.).

  • The key value is the translation string

  • Example translation JSON file

en.json

    {
        "UI-WELCOME_MESSAGE": "Loading Kibana",        
        "UI-WELCOME_ERROR": "Kibana did not load properly. Check the server output for more information."
    }
  • Core Kibana plugins like ‘kibana’ and ‘status_page’ could come with their own English translations bundled in
  • API:
    • Return all translations for registered locales
      • getAllTranslations()
      • A Promise object where keys are the locale and values are Objects of translation keys and translations
    • Return all translations registered for the default locale:
      • getTranslationsForDefaultLocale()
      • A Promise for an object where keys are translation keys and values are translations
    • Return translations for a suitable locale from a user side locale list of BCP 47 language tags:
      • getTranslations(...languageTags)
      • A Promise for an object where keys are translation keys and values are translations
      • This object will contain all registered translations for the highest priority locale which is registered with the i18n module
      • This object can be empty if no locale in the language tags can be matched against the registered locales
    • Register translations:
      • registerTranslations(<absolute_path_to_translation_file>)
      • The path to the translation file is registered with i18n class

UiI18n Class

  • Handles the interaction between the UI/server and localization (I18n class)
  • Maps the accept-language header to BCP 47 tags
  • Fetches the language as requested where the locale is decided by the translation algorithm
  • It also substitutes any missing translations with the default locale translation

Tool for Verifying All Translations have Translatable Strings

  • Grunt run task tool that tests all translatable strings have a translation (i.e. all translation IDs have a corresponding translation string)
  • This could be run by CI to verify globalization end-to-end capability
  • A possible solution:
    • For non-angular constructs: Enforce a pattern to be used. For example a i18n(<key>) function in the Jade template. A tool can then be used to find such pattern and extract the keys to file
    • The keys in the key file(s) would then be checked against the language translation files registered

Deliverable

  • Translate the start-up message (“Kibana is loading ...”) and error message in the Jade template (Kibana Jade template)
  • Translation message will be loaded using the language as per the deciding algorithm. For phase 1 the default 'en' langauge will be used.
  • I18n unit tests
  • Tool can be run by CI to verify translation IDs have a corresponding translation string
  • Kibana core plugin registers its translation file during the initialization phase. The translation file contains strings for the welcome message and the start-up error message.

Phase 2

Purpose

  • Integrate angular-translate globalization framework with i18n engine (from phase 1)
  • Provide template for enabling translations in an AngularJS view by translating a view
  • Implement a tool to generate the translation plugin
  • Documentation

Translations Available Client Side

  • Make the translations available on the client side by:
    • Embedding the translations in the initial HTML payload:
      • Reduces complexity and removes a round trip
      • Evaluation required to test if it performs well and does not create a large payload
    • If the evaluation of HTML payload is non performant, then the following approaches should be investigated in this order:
      1. Use current bundle mechanism:
        • (Kibana Jade template) to call API and generate the bundle which will be loaded during start-up
        • The JavaScript bundle produced will be of the following format: i18n_<language>.bundle.js
        • Kibana loads all resource bundles on the client side after starting the single-page application
      2. Client side directly calls REST API and loads the JSON payload:
        • GET /i18n/translations ==> returns the English (or German or whatever) translations negotiated with the browser HTTP header “accept-language” priority list compared against the languages supported
        • GET /i18n/translationsForDefaultLocale ==> returns the default locale translations
    • All approaches will decide the language to be served up by using the language deciding algorithm (from Phase 1) hose that want to enable translation in Kibana those that want to contribute translations to Kibana those that want to create a Kibana Plugin

Translation Identifiers Added to Kibana UI

  • Ids are added to the relevant view with Angular and HTML content
  • English (en) translation file is generated for the Ids defined
  • Approach for translating UI content:
    • Angular UI portion:
      • Use angular-translate for simplicity of the UI template resources, taking advantage of angular idioms.

BEFORE (HTML)

    <div class="sidebar-list">
    …

    <div class="sidebar-list-header">
        <h5>Selected Fields</h5>
    </div>

AFTER (HTML)

    <div class="sidebar-list">
    …

    <div class="sidebar-list-header">
        <h5 translate="FIELDS_SELECTEDFIELDS"></h5>
    </div>

Tool for Verifying All Translations have Translatable Strings (Update)

  • Verify translation IDs in Angular templates
  • Possible solutions are:
    • Use grunt-angular-translate . Searches all view and JS scripts to find angular-translate calls and extracts keys to file
    • Update current verification tool to search for angular-translate pattern in code and extract the keys
  • The keys in the key file(s) would then be checked against the language translation files registered

Translation Plugin Generator

  • Tool which generates a translation plugin
  • Localization engineer should only need to add translation file(s) within the plugin directory, refernce the file(s) in the 'uiExports' plugin extension, and add plugin to Kibana
  • All integration with Kibana works OOTB

Deliverable

  • Angular View where globalization is enabled showing the pattern to use
  • Verification tool updated to check translations in angular-translate constructs
  • [Elastic] Translatation and verification of xplugins (React)
  • A generator that localization engineers can use to produce language translations and integrate them in Kibana in an easy manner
  • Documentation relevant for the following stakeholders:
    • those that want to enable translation in Kibana
    • those that want to contribute translations to Kibana
    • those that want to create a Kibana Plugin

Phase 3

Purpose

  • Add the translation identifiers and English translation strings for the existing Kibana AngularJS views

Translation Identifiers Added to Kibana UI

  • Ids are added to all the relevant UI content (HTML, JS etc.)
  • English (en) translation file(s) are generated for the Ids defined

Deliverables

  • English translation bundles are available so that localization engineers can start generating translation plugins for different languages

Phase 4

Purpose

  • Contributing language packs

Handling Language Packs

  • Provide a pseudo language which will test the potential real estate of views for all language
  • Define core supported languages
  • Process for language pack builders:
    • Creating packs
    • Merging packs

Deliverables

  • Process for contributing language packs
  • Core language packs as supported by Kibana

Blockers

Open Questions/Issues

  • Translation of user data. TODO: requires a separate issue.
  • Server side set locale (ignore the client's requested locale)
  • Provide mechanism in UI for user to manually switch their language from list of supported languages
  • What about bi-directional language support? This affects language, charts and UI content support.
  • UI views should be able to handle different languages (This means when switching from one language to another (for example, English to German) that the look and feel is maintained) :
    • Different languages can have variable content lengths. This means having adequate spacing to handle the strings in each language.
    • Need to consider different fonts. Some web fonts won't support all possible languages.

History

This section has links to prior versions of this issue text.

Authors

  • Martin Hickey: @hickeyma
  • Scott Russell: @DTownSMR
  • Shikha Srivastava: @shikhasriva
  • Steven R. Loomis: @srl295
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