xcstrings-translate 🌍

xct is a CLI util to machine-translate Apple String Catalog (.xcstrings).

💫 I personally use this for my app Replay, check it out!

Features

• Machine-translate .xcstrings to target locales via Copilot CLI.
• Importing translated CSV back into .xcstrings.
• Auto-filling zh-Hans from zh-Hant with OpenCC.

Requirements

• Node.js >=18
• copilot CLI in PATH. Learn more

Install

npm install -g xcstrings-translate

Or run without installing:

npx xcstrings-translate --help

Usage

💡 Turn on "Automatically generate string catalog comments" in XCode for best machine translation results.

Machine translation workflow

xct ./Localizable.xcstrings --auto fr,it

Options:

• --out <directory>
  • Directory for temporary CSV files.
  • Defaults to the OS temp directory (os.tmpdir()), so it is cross-platform.
• --export-only
  • Export temp CSV files only, skip translation/import.
• --chunk-size <n>
  • Number of rows per temp CSV chunk.
  • Default: 100.
• --model <name>
  • Optional model override for auto-translation.
  • Default: claude-haiku-4.5.
  • Recommend to use 0.33x models for best results. For no usage drain, use 0x models like gpt-4.1
• --retranslate-matching <regex>
  • Only process keys matching the regex.

Import-only workflow

xct ./Localizable.xcstrings --import ./translations_fr.csv

Chinese conversion workflow

xct ./Localizable.xcstrings --cc zh-Hans
xct ./Localizable.xcstrings --cc zh-Hant

Options:

• --cc zh-Hans: fill missing zh-Hans from zh-Hant
• --cc zh-Hant: fill missing zh-Hant from zh-Hans

Development

bun install
bun run check

License

MIT. See LICENSE.