За життя

When we first shipped Tlumach 1.0 last November, the goal was simple: give .NET developers a clean, type-safe way to handle translations without the boilerplate that usually comes with localization. Six months later, we're releasing version 1.6 — and the project has grown into something much larger than a library.

Tlumach is now an ecosystem. Starting with version 1.5, we introduced the Tlumach.Writers package — a full set of writer classes mirroring every parser we support. JSON, ARB, INI, TOML, CSV, TSV, ResX, XLIFF, and now Apple String Catalog can all be read and written by Tlumach. This opens the door to conversion tools, export/import pipelines, and the foundation for Tlumach Tools — a dedicated toolset aimed at translators and localization managers, not just developers.

Version 1.5 also brought a number of quality-of-life improvements to TranslationManager: a static list of all active manager instances, new overloads for loading translations by culture, and a dedicated LoadDefaultTranslation method tailored for file conversion scenarios. These additions make it much easier to build tooling on top of Tlumach — exactly what we needed as we expanded beyond the core library.

The headline feature of version 1.6, however, is the arrival of IDE extensions for Visual Studio and VS Code. These extensions let you trigger the Tlumach Generator directly from your IDE — without needing to build your project first. This is a significant productivity win: you can regenerate your strongly-typed translation classes the moment you update a translation file, with no extra build step. The extensions are designed for developers who live in their IDE and want Tlumach to stay out of the way.


Even more powerful is the Go To Definition integration in the Visual Studio extension. When you're working with generated translation keys in your C# code, you can press F12 (or Ctrl+Click) on a key and jump directly to the original translation entry in your default translation file. If you've ever had to hunt through a JSON or RESX file to find where a particular string lives, you'll appreciate how much time this saves. This brings Tlumach's developer experience closer to what you'd expect from first-class language tooling.


Also in 1.6: the Roslyn Generator now writes the source text value into XML documentation comments on each generated constant. Hover over a translation key in your IDE and you'll see the actual translation text in the tooltip — no more switching to the translation file just to check what a key says. For teams with long or non-obvious key names, this alone is worth the upgrade.


Rounding out 1.6 is support for the Apple String Catalog format (.xcstrings), making Tlumach a viable choice for cross-platform projects that target Apple platforms alongside .NET. Combined with the existing XLIFF support added in 1.5, Tlumach can now speak the file formats used by virtually every major platform's localization pipeline.


Looking back at the last six months, the shape of Tlumach has clarified considerably. The core library handles runtime translation management and type-safe code generation. The Writers package enables tooling and conversion. The IDE extensions bring the workflow into the editor. And new file formats keep expanding the range of projects Tlumach can serve. This is what a maturing localization library looks like — not just more features, but a coherent set of layers that work together.


Version 1.6 is available now on NuGet as AlliedBits.Tlumach. The Visual Studio and VS Code extensions are available in their respective marketplaces and can be installed from the corresponding IDE or via the above links. As always, the changelog has the full details, and we welcome feedback and contributions on GitHub.