Wrap strings for react-i18next without breaking your catalogs

react-i18next projects keep catalogs in more places than any other ecosystem — public/locales, src/locales, inline resources objects. Polyglot detects the file-based layouts and merges into them; when your dictionaries are inline (nothing on disk to merge into), it flags every string with a fix recipe instead of writing a catalog your app would never load.

The transformation

"use client";

export default function Page() {
    return (
        <main>
            <h1>Welcome back</h1>
            <p>Your projects are ready</p>
            <input placeholder="Search projects" />
        </main>
    );
}

"use client";
import { useTranslation } from "react-i18next";

export default function Page() {
  const { t } = useTranslation();
    return (
        <main>
            <h1>{t('welcome_back')}</h1>
            <p>{t('your_projects_are_ready')}</p>
            <input placeholder={t('search_projects')} />
        </main>
    );
}

Keys merge into your layout

This fixture keeps catalogs in src/locales/<lng>/<ns>.json — Polyglot found them and merged, preserving existing keys and their order:

{
  "existing_key": "Already translated",
  "search_projects": "Search projects",
  "your_projects_are_ready": "Your projects are ready",
  "welcome_back": "Welcome back"
}

{
  "existing_key": "Bereits übersetzt",
  "search_projects": "Search projects",
  "your_projects_are_ready": "Your projects are ready",
  "welcome_back": "Welcome back"
}

Honest failure beats silent breakage

Three behaviors you won't get from a find-and-replace script:

• A component whose t comes from useTranslation('ns', { keyPrefix }) gets keys nested under that prefix, called relatively — resolution-correct at runtime.
• A string whose text already exists in the bound namespace reuses the existing key.
• A setup Polyglot can't statically join (computed catalog paths, inline resources) produces a flagged report, not broken lookups.

Try it

$ curl -fsSL https://getpolyglot.ai/install.sh | bash
$ polyglot init --framework nextjs
$ polyglot scan
$ polyglot wrap
$ polyglot translate --languages de   # 50 strings free, no signup