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Speaking every language, with plurals right

25 January 2026·2 min read

"1 items" is the most common translation bug on the web. Plural rules per language, built in, make t() say the right thing in Polish and Arabic too.

Translating a site looks like a lookup: a key, a string per language. Then the first count arrives. English has two forms (one item, two items). French says "0 article". Polish has three forms, Arabic six. A translation library that only knows "one" and "other" is wrong in most of the world.

Translations in Quillo

translations("locales")          // locales/en.json, locales/fr.json, locales/pt-BR.jsonview Header(user) = <header>    <a href="/">{t("nav.home")}</a>    <span>{t("greeting", { name: user.name })}</span>    <span>{t("cart.items", { count: len(user.cart) })}</span></header>

{ "nav": { "home": "Accueil" },  "greeting": "Bonjour, {name} !",  "cart": { "items": { "one": "{count} article", "other": "{count} articles" } } }

A key with plural forms (zero one two few many other) is picked by count, using the language's own rules, which are built in: French and Portuguese treat 0 as singular, Russian and Polish have their few and many, Japanese and Chinese have one form.

Which language

A request's language comes from, in order: your own choice (locale_from, a user's setting), a locale cookie, the browser's Accept-Language, then the default. fr-CA is served by fr, pt by pt-BR. A key missing in a language falls back to the default one, so a half-translated site still reads.

On both sides

t() works on the server and in components alike, from the same files, so a counter in the browser says "3 articles" with the same rules the server used.

Read more: Translations in the docs.