A Ruby gem for quickly, reliably, and accurately translating your Rails application using OpenAI. Created because it replaced a $34K/year SaaS contract and streamlined our deploy process.

Honyaku was built using Cursor Composer with claude-3.5-sonnet, prompted by Andrew Culver at ClickFunnels.

• Preserves YAML structure, references, and interpolation variables
• Supports translation rules via .honyakurules files
• Handles large files through automatic chunking
• Automatically fixes YAML formatting issues caused by the GPT
• Smart file skipping to avoid unnecessary retranslation

$ honyaku translate ja --path config/locales/en/affiliates             
📋 Found 2 translation rule file(s):
   📝 /Users/andrewculver/Sites/admin/.honyakurules
   🌐 /Users/andrewculver/Sites/admin/.honyakurules.ja
🌏 Translating from en to ja...
📂 Processing files in config/locales/en/affiliates...
📝 Processing config/locales/en/affiliates/active_referrals_report.en.yml...
📦 Splitting file into 3 chunks...
🔄 Translating chunk 1 of 3...
🔄 Translating chunk 2 of 3...
🔄 Translating chunk 3 of 3...
✨ Created config/locales/ja/affiliates/active_referrals_report.ja.yml
🔧 Checking for YAML issues...
✅ No more YAML errors found
📝 Processing config/locales/en/affiliates/add_tag_actions.en.yml...
✨ Created config/locales/ja/affiliates/add_tag_actions.ja.yml
🔧 Checking for YAML issues...
🔧 Found YAML error on line 5: (<unknown>): found character that cannot start any token while scanning for the next token at line 5 column 13
   zero: %{count}アフィリエイトにコミッションプランアクションを追加する
🔧 Found YAML error on line 6: (<unknown>): found character that cannot start any token while scanning for the next token at line 6 column 12
   one: %{count}アフィリエイトにコミッションプランアクションを追加する
🔧 Found YAML error on line 7: (<unknown>): found character that cannot start any token while scanning for the next token at line 7 column 14
   other: %{count}アフィリエイトにコミッションプランアクションを追加する
✅ No more YAML errors found
✨ Fixed YAML formatting issues
⏭️  Skipping config/locales/en/affiliates/applied_tags.en.yml - translation is up to date
⏭️  Skipping config/locales/en/affiliates/approve_actions.en.yml - translation is up to date
...

Add to your Gemfile:

gem 'honyaku'

Or install directly:

gem install honyaku

Set your OpenAI API key:

export OPENAI_API_KEY=your-api-key

Or if you've already got that configured for another purpose and you want to specify a different key for Honyaku, you can set this and we'll use it instead:

export HONYAKU_OPENAI_API_KEY=your-api-key

# Translate a file
honyaku translate ja --path config/locales/en.yml

# Translate a directory
honyaku translate es --path config/locales

# Create backups before modifying
honyaku translate ja --backup --path config/locales/en.yml

# Use GPT-3.5-turbo for faster processing
honyaku translate fr --model gpt-3.5-turbo --path config/locales/en.yml

# Force retranslation of files even if they're up to date
honyaku translate ja --force --path config/locales/en.yml

Honyaku tracks file modification times to avoid unnecessary retranslation:

• Checks both git history and filesystem timestamps
• Uses the newer of the two dates for comparison
• Skips translation if target file is newer than source
• Shows "⏭️ Skipping" message for up-to-date files

You can override this behavior with --force to retranslate all files regardless of their timestamps.

Honyaku supports two types of rule files:

• .honyakurules - General rules for all translations
• .honyakurules.{locale} - Language-specific rules (e.g., .honyakurules.ja)

Example .honyakurules:

Don't translate the term "ClickFunnels", that's our brand name.

Example .honyakurules.ja:

When translating to Japanese, do not insert a space between particles like `%{site_name} に`... that should be `%{site_name}に`

Rules can be used for:

• Preserving brand names
• Enforcing locale-specific formatting
• Maintaining consistent terminology

Fix formatting issues in translated files:

# Fix a single file
honyaku fix config/locales/ja/application.ja.yml

# Fix all files in a directory
honyaku fix config/locales/ja --backup

Files over 250 lines are automatically split into chunks for translation. Each chunk maintains proper YAML structure to ensure accurate translations.

When invalid YAML is detected:

1. Automatic formatting fixes are attempted
2. Translation is retried if necessary
3. Original file is preserved if fixes fail

After checking out the repo:

1. Run bin/setup to install dependencies
2. Run rake test to run the tests
3. Run bin/console for an interactive prompt

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/andrewculver/honyaku.

Released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.