How to Properly Send Multilanguage Emails in Kirby

The CMS Questions
1

Hi everyone,

I’m having trouble with multilingual emails in Kirby. My site supports multiple languages and I have all my translation keys set up in /site/languages/en.php, /de.php, etc.

When I send an email to a user, I want the email content (subject, table headers, etc.) to be in the user’s language. The user’s language is stored in their account (e.g. 'language' => 'de').

What I do:

Before sending the email, I set the language like this:

$oldLanguage = $kirby->language();
if ($user && $user->language()) {
  $kirby->setCurrentLanguage($user->language());
}

// Collect all data for the email (subject, body, etc.)
// and send the email using translation keys

$kirby->email([
    'from'     => 'noreply@example.com',
    'fromName' => 'My Site',
    'to'       => $user->email(),
    'subject'  => t('order.confirmation.subject'),
    'template' => 'order_confirmation',
    'data'     => [
        'name'     => $user->name(),
        'order_id' => $orderId,
        'products' => $products,
        'total'    => $total,
        // ... other data ...
    ]
]);

if ($oldLanguage) {
  $kirby->setCurrentLanguage($oldLanguage->code());
}

The problem:

Even after setting the language, the translations inside the email (using t('...') in the email template) always use the default language (English), not the user’s language.

Questions:

  • Why does Kirby still use the default language for translations inside the email, even after calling $kirby->setCurrentLanguage($user->language())?

  • Is there a correct way to force Kirby to use the user’s language for all translations when rendering email templates?

  • Is there something else I need to do to make sure the email content is always in the right language?

Any advice or examples would be greatly appreciated!

2

What you could do is pass the user language in the data array, and then pass that language to each t() helper.

t('mykey', null, $langCode)

Don’t know if there is another or better way.

3

Try setCurrentTranslation() - either in addition or instead setCurrentLanguage(), not so sure.

I think that might solve it.

1 Like
4

It sets the I18n::$locale which is used by the t() helper, so that sounds good.