Rosetta

A lightweight desktop editor for JSON i18n locale files. Open a folder, edit translations, see changes live in your app.

What it does

• Spreadsheet-style table editor for translation keys across locales
• Namespace tree with folder grouping, search, and filters (missing, unreviewed)
• Live preview — edits push to your running app via WebSocket, no restart needed
• Review tracking to mark translations as checked
• CLI for CI: check missing keys, coverage stats, completeness
• macOS, Windows, Linux

Install

Desktop app

Grab the latest build from Releases. No setup required — just open the app and point it at your locales folder.

VS Code extension

Install Rosetta i18n from the VS Code Marketplace, or search "Rosetta i18n" in the extensions panel. Same editor, same features, right inside VS Code. See the extension README for details.

CLI

Install the rosetta command from within the app (Settings) or run it directly:

rosetta missing ./locales    # Show missing translations
rosetta stats ./locales      # Coverage statistics
rosetta complete ./locales   # Check if all translations are complete (exit code for CI)
rosetta list-locales ./locales
rosetta list-keys ./locales [namespace]

Live preview

Install @terraquant/rosetta-connect in your app to get real-time translation updates while editing:

npm install @terraquant/rosetta-connect

import i18next from "i18next";
import { connectRosetta } from "rosetta-connect";

if (process.env.NODE_ENV === "development") {
    connectRosetta(i18next);
}

See the full setup guide for details.

Locale directory structure

Rosetta expects the standard i18next file layout:

locales/
  en/
    common.json
    pages/
      home.json
  fr/
    common.json
    pages/
      home.json

Each top-level directory is a locale. JSON files and subdirectories become namespaces. Nested keys are flattened with dot notation in the editor.

FAQ

Why does this exist? There are other i18n editors out there.

Most of them are full-blown platforms — cloud-hosted, team-based, with pricing tiers and onboarding flows. Great if you need that, but overkill if you just want to edit some JSON files.

Rosetta is a local desktop app that opens a folder and lets you work. It's meant to be trivially easy to set up and operate, even for non-technical people like translators who just need to fill in strings.

What does the workflow look like?

For developers: open your project's locales folder in Rosetta and edit directly. Hook up the live preview connector and see changes in your running app as you type.

For translators: get a copy of the locales folder from your dev team, download Rosetta, and start editing. If the dev provides a running build of the app with the connector enabled, translators can see their changes reflected live — no dev environment needed.

Is this the right tool for my team?

If you're a large team with multiple translators working simultaneously and need collaboration features, access control, or translation memory — look at dedicated platforms like Crowdin or Lokalise.

If you're a small dev team that either does translations in-house or sends out one-off tasks to freelance translators, Rosetta is built for you.

License

MIT