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DWE DWE v0.5.0

Translations and Language Behavior

How DWE resolves the active locale, where translated long-form docs live on disk, and how the content-hash staleness check keeps translations honest.

Locale resolution

Section titled “Locale resolution”

DWE picks an active locale via the precedence chain:

  1. --lang flag (on docs show / docs export / docs list; per-invocation)
  2. DWE_LANGUAGE environment variable
  3. language setting in userconfig (~/.config/dwe/config or .dwe/config)
  4. System $LANG (parsed to 2-letter code)
  5. Default: en (English)

Per-file fallback: if a markdown file is not translated to the resolved locale, DWE automatically uses the English version and displays an info banner.

Long-form documentation translations

Section titled “Long-form documentation translations”

See Localization (i18n) — Long-form documentation translations for complete details on the two i18n namespaces and translation file layout.

Translation file layout

Section titled “Translation file layout”

Long-form documentation translations live in a separate namespace from command/UI strings:

docs/
  reference/               # English built-ins
    config/
      workspace.md
    ...
  internals/
    architecture.md
    ...
  i18n/
    ru/                    # Russian translations
      reference/
        config/
          workspace.md        # Translated version
      internals/
        ...
    de/                    # German translations
      ...

Translations are optional; missing translations fall back to English with an info banner.

Content-hash staleness check

Section titled “Content-hash staleness check”

Each translated markdown file includes a header line that records the SHA256 hash of the English version at translation time:

# DWE Configuration
...

When you view a translation, DWE compares this hash against the embedded manifest (generated at build time). If they differ, the translation is marked stale and a warning banner appears:

⚠ This translation is outdated (last synced at previous version, current is newer). Press `e` to view the English version.

Translators can update the hash as part of their pull request; DWE re-generates the manifest at the next make build.

See also

Section titled “See also”