Translations

The default messages in Blockly (such as the text in the context menu) have been translated to many different languages. The en locale is loaded by default, but the other available locales can be included as well.

Configuring locale with npm

When you import Blockly with import * as Blockly from 'blockly'; you'll get the default modules: Blockly core, Blockly built-in blocks, the JavaScript generator and the English lang files.

To use other locales, you'll want to define your imports more carefully:

Import Blockly default modules

import * as Blockly from 'blockly/core';
import 'blockly/blocks';
import 'blockly/javascript'; // Or the generator of your choice

Import Blockly languages

For example, to import the French message set:

import * as Fr from 'blockly/msg/fr';

For a full list of supported Blockly locales, see: https://github.com/google/blockly/tree/master/msg/js

Configure locale

After importing the desired message set, you'll want to set the locale in Blockly. This function is currently only included in the npm release of Blockly.

Blockly.setLocale(Fr);

This needs to be called before the workspace is loaded.

Configuring locale without npm

Include the appropriate script src from the Blockly msg directory, and the translations will be automatically included.

<script src="../../blockly_compressed.js"></script>
<script src="../../blocks_compressed.js"></script>
<script src="../../msg/js/ar.js"></script>

Custom translations

Blockly includes translations for all of its default strings, but if you have custom blocks with text, you may wish to include your own translations for those strings. For example, the structure of blockly/msg/es is similar to the following:

Blockly.Msg["COLOUR_RGB_RED"] = "rojo";

You can add additional custom messages as new properties on the Blockly.Msg object by calling setLocale with an object with your custom translations. You may wish to prefix your translations with a custom prefix so that you avoid collisions with any default translations that may be added in the future.

// In custom_es.js
export const CustomEs = {
  HELLO: "Hola",
}

// In your setup code
import * as Es from blockly/msg/Es;
import { CustomEs } from ../custom_es;
Blockly.setLocale(Es);
Blockly.setLocale(CustomEs);

setLocale puts each key from the input object into Blockly.Msg. You can call it multiple times with distinct keys, but calling it a second time with a duplicate key will overwrite the first.

To reference the translated string in your block, use Blockly.Msg['HELLO'] which should contain the string for the locale you've configured.