An English _note key sat in gospel.json in all eleven locales, so every
Arabic reader downloaded an English paragraph about how the file is
organised. It also fooled a gate: because it was text present in ar and
absent from en, it satisfied a probe asking "does this bundle contain
Arabic translations?" for a bundle with every Arabic character stripped
out. A value no reader is meant to see is a value no check should be able
to count.
The reasoning it carried is real and is kept — which pools were searched,
why a mistranslated caveat there would read as authoritative, why Open
Bible Stories is not Scripture — moved to a README beside the catalogues
along with the rule that nothing in those files is a comment.
Adding that README turned check:i18n-parity red, which is the second half
of this commit: it enumerated locales with existsSync, true for a file as
well as a directory, so the README read as a locale missing all 1,685
keys. Documentation belongs next to what it documents; the filter was
wrong. Locales are directories now.
2.7 KB out of every bundle, and gospel.prose.english — the one translated
line that says the prose stays English — is untouched.
The app's Chinese is Simplified, and so were 39 keys of the packet's zh
block. The other 18 were Traditional - page 1's subtitle, the list
header, the card labels, and the whole prayer wheel and all twelve
prayer points - so a Chinese packet switched script partway through.
The block had been extended by matching the neighbouring line, which
was itself the drift; the missing-map sentence added in 74e5c4b0d
followed that same neighbour and is corrected here too.
Converted with a real converter (zhconv, MediaWiki's tables), not a
hand-picked character list: it converts characters (為 to 为, 禱 to 祷)
and mainland vocabulary (列印 to 打印), and a hand list had found only
17 of the 18 keys. A second pass changes nothing, so the block is
Simplified by the converter's own definition. 祂 is kept. The block
carries no licensed scripture - Mark 5 falls back to English there - so
only prayer prose and labels changed.
check-i18n-parity's zh arm walked the app catalogues and never the
packet's, which is how 18 keys drifted unseen. It now walks the packet
block as well; pointed at the block before this commit it fails with 41
values, and passes after. Its character set remains a floor, as it says.
The character set (322, from the UPG-100 owner's census, minus two shared by both scripts) is a
floor, and the PASS line says so; a t2s converter would make it exact if one is ever installed.
regions.json for it/ro/zh, 54 keys each. check:i18n-parity now reports "0 key(s) of
known translation debt remain", closing the 429-key gap it found when it was written.
★ THE DEBT MAP IS EMPTY RATHER THAN FULL OF ZEROS, and that is the whole point of
this ratchet: a locale with NO entry must be complete — the gate fails it outright
for a single missing key — so an empty DEBT is the strongest state it can be in, not
an unset one. Writing { it: 0, ro: 0, zh: 0 } would mean the same today and quietly
permit a regression the moment someone "adjusted" a number. Mutation-tested both
ways: removing ONE key fails ("it is missing 1/176 key(s) and has no DEBT entry"),
deleting the whole file fails (54/176).
THE CARD'S ESTIMATE WAS WRONG AND IS CORRECTED. It recorded "54 keys of full
SENTENCES". Measured: 45 short labels (median 14.5 chars) + 9 longer strings, three
carrying %count%/%countries%/%region%/%country% interpolation tokens. The catalog is
keyed by its own English TEXT, not symbolic keys — which is exactly why the gap was
invisible: the fallback renders the English key itself, so key and value are
identical in English and nothing ever looks broken.
PLACEHOLDERS HELD BY A PROGRAMMATIC CHECK, not by care: every %token% in every
English value must appear, same set, in all three translations. 0 mismatches, 0
empty values. Mangling one breaks interpolation at runtime with nothing to catch it.
VERIFIED AT THE RENDERED LAYER on the regions-list leaf, en/it/ro/zh: labels
translated (Regions -> Regioni), the intro sentence translated, and the INTERPOLATED
count sentence correct — "315 people groups in 41 countries" -> "315 popoli in 41
paesi", both placeholders substituted with real numbers. Zero page errors. Each
locale asserted to DIFFER from English, so a silent fallback could not pass.
★ That sentence is the exact bug regions-list.vue:144 records: the Russian string was
"ALREADY in library/i18n/locales/ru/regions.json — copied, never wired", caught by
reading a screenshot rather than by any assertion. Now it is asserted.
zh is SIMPLIFIED, measured not assumed: the existing zh catalogs carry 33
Simplified-only characters against 4 Traditional. Vocabulary follows each locale's
own established terms — Popolo / Popor / 民族, Regione / Regiune / 区域 — and WAGF
stays an acronym, as fr and de already had it.
120 keys across three locales: legend.json (12 each), search.json kinds (10
each) and tabs.json (18 each, previously absent entirely). Each locale follows
its own established vocabulary rather than a parallel one — Popolo/Popor/民族,
matching the terms already used in that catalog's detail and legend strings.
zh stays Simplified here, as the rest of this tree is, even though the prayer
packet's zh block is Traditional: a reader sees 民族 next to 祷告进度, never
the two files side by side.
Ceilings drop 94 -> 54 per locale. regions.json is the only i18n debt left in
the app: 54 keys of full sentences, three locales.
WHY THE NEW GATE. check:i18n-parity compares catalogs TO EACH OTHER, so it
certifies a file no t() call ever reaches — perfect symmetry, zero consumers,
green forever. Grepping for t('tabs. found ZERO call sites and tabs.json was
nearly recorded as dead. It is not: the only consumer builds the key
dynamically (SemanticTreeLegend.vue:40, 'tabs.' + (tab.i18nKey || tab.id)),
which no literal-prefix grep can see. The reverse error appeared in the same
pass — regions. and options. matched only poster-regions.mjs and a JS options
parameter. Static reachability is unavailable in both directions, so
check:tabs-localized renders the labels and reads them.
It asserts DIFFERENCE from English, not mere presence: te() falls back to the
hardcoded English label, so "shows some text" passes on the exact failure
being tested. Mutation-tested three ways — missing catalog FAILs, an all-English
catalog FAILs (first draft PASSed it, taking a per-pair exemption seven times),
one legitimate collision still passes with a note.
Both i18n gates now run in gates:post; neither was wired into the build before.
Also fixed, found by the build rather than sought:
- check-i18n-parity hardcoded an absolute path, so the studio copy silently
graded wt-packet's locales and reported PASS on a tree it never read. Now
repo-relative. That exposed the studio's own locale tree as a strict subset,
103 keys behind including buttons.json:share — the very orphan this gate's
header says it was written to catch, reappeared unseen in a second repo.
Synced forward: zero studio-only keys, zero text conflicts, lossless.
- index.json still declared field-access-visas with rows:1146, a leftover from
the commit that removed that table as private. The generator already filters
private tables; the committed artifact predated the filter. Removing the
declaration also removes the row-count leak. Copying the file in would have
reopened the leak.
- check:sfc-parse needs an installed node_modules and is the first pre-gate to
fail without one, so a dependency-less worktree reads as a parse error.
Documented, with the reason switching it to bun only appears to fix it.
344 -> 282 keys. de and hi reached zero and join ar/es/fr/pt/ru as entries
DELETED from the DEBT map: the gate treats an absent locale as "must be
complete", so removal is what makes a finished translation permanent.
The three that remain (it, ro, zh) are each missing WHOLE catalog files rather
than stray keys, which is worth stating in the file — it tells the next person
these are real translation work, not the propagation gaps the last two ticks
closed.
Confirmed the guarantee before relying on it: deleting one Hindi tab key reports
"hi is missing 1/176 key(s) and has no DEBT entry" rather than passing.
The ceilings drop as the debt is paid: 429 -> 344 keys, and ar/es/fr/pt/ru
reached zero.
Those five are REMOVED from the DEBT map rather than set to 0. The gate already
treats a locale with no entry as "must be complete", so deletion is what
converts a finished translation into a permanent guarantee — setting 0 would
read the same but leaves a line inviting someone to raise it.
Confirmed the guarantee works before relying on it: deleting one Spanish key
reports "es is missing 1/176 key(s) and has no DEBT entry" rather than passing.
The failure here is silent BY DESIGN. vue-i18n falls back to English for a
missing key, which is the right runtime behaviour and exactly why catalogs drift
unnoticed: the app looks fine, nothing errors, and a reader who chose Spanish
just gets English words with no signal anything is missing.
Measured when this was written: buttons.json had 21 keys in English and 19 in
every other locale. The orphans were `share` and `shareSteps` — the Share
button's title and its explainer, rendered on EVERY map. Ten locales had been
shipping an English Share button since those keys landed.
★ IT FOUND MUCH MORE THAN THE BUG THAT PROMPTED IT: 429 missing keys across ten
locales, with popup.json existing only in English and it/ro/zh also lacking
regions.json and tabs.json entirely — 101 of 176 keys each.
So it RATCHETS rather than blocks. Each locale has a ceiling; the gate fails
when one gets WORSE and prints a nudge when one gets better so the ceiling can
be lowered. Failing outright on 429 keys of debt this gate did not create would
block every build, and a gate everyone disables protects nothing. A locale with
no ceiling entry must be complete, so a NEW locale cannot be added half-done.
Keys are compared FLATTENED, so a nested object or an array is checked
key-by-key rather than counted as one present key.
Confirmed to fail before acceptance: deleting two French keys reports
"fr regressed: 8 missing key(s), was 6" and names them.
