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Hermes

Hermes is a lightweight internationalization (i18n) library for Node.js applications. We use it in our Discord bots to handle dozens of languages without slowing down startup.

  • Translations in JSON or JSON5, split across as many files and directories as you like.
  • A build step that merges everything into a single optimized file, applies fallback languages and checks for missing translations.
  • Simple formatting with variables and expressions: conditions, plurals, dates, switch.
  • Outdated translation tracking: when a source string changes, every language that had translated it gets flagged.
  • A CLI (hermes build, check, todo, lock) ready for continuous integration.
  • Discord's language codes (fr, en-US, pt-BR, zh-TW…), ready to use for localized commands.

Example​

locales/en-US.json
{
  "greeting": "Hello, %name%!",
  "inbox": "You have %count% %count:plural(message|messages|no messages)%"
}
npx hermes build
import Hermes from '@fca.gg/hermes';

Hermes.init();

const ctx = Hermes.getContext('en-US');
ctx.t('greeting', {name: 'Alice'}); // "Hello, Alice!"
ctx.t('inbox', {count: 3}); // "You have 3 messages"

To get started, follow the installation.

License​

Hermes is released under the AGPL v3 license: if you use or adapt it, even over a network, you must share your changes. The source code is on GitHub.