PO File Format

The PO (Portable Object) format is the standard for software translation since the 1990s. pofile-ts fully supports this format.

What We Support

Feature	Supported	Example
Singular translations	✅	`msgid` / `msgstr`
Plural forms	✅	`msgid_plural` / `msgstr[0]`, `msgstr[1]`, ...
Message context	✅	`msgctxt`
Comments	✅	`#`, `#.`, `#:`, `#,`
Flags	✅	`fuzzy`, `no-wrap`, etc.
Obsolete entries	✅	`#~`
All UTF-8 content	✅	—

Content Agnostic

pofile-ts parses the PO structure — it doesn't interpret what's inside msgid or msgstr. Your strings can contain:

Plain text: "Hello, World!"
Unicode ICU MessageFormat (v1): "{count, plural, one {# item} other {# items}}"
Unicode MessageFormat 2.0: .match {$count} one {{...}} * {{...}}
Any other format your i18n library uses

This makes pofile-ts a universal PO parser that works with any translation workflow.

Important: There is no normalization between formats. Native Gettext plurals and ICU-embedded plurals result in different data structures.

// Native Gettext: msgid_plural set, msgstr has multiple entries
{ msgid_plural: "{count} items", msgstr: ["Ein Element", "{count} Elemente"] }

// ICU embedded: msgid_plural null, msgstr has one entry with ICU syntax
{ msgid_plural: null, msgstr: ["{count, plural, one {...} other {...}}"] }

Gettext Plurals vs ICU Plurals

There are two ways to handle pluralization in PO files.

Native Gettext Plurals

The original Gettext plural system uses indexed forms defined by a formula in the header:

# Header defines plural rules
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1);\n"

# German (2 forms: singular, plural)
msgid "One item"
msgid_plural "{count} items"
msgstr[0] "Ein Element"
msgstr[1] "{count} Elemente"

# Arabic (6 forms: zero, one, two, few, many, other)
msgstr[0] "..."  # zero
msgstr[1] "..."  # one
msgstr[2] "..."  # two
msgstr[3] "..."  # few
msgstr[4] "..."  # many
msgstr[5] "..."  # other

ICU MessageFormat (embedded in msgstr)

Libraries like Lingui embed ICU MessageFormat syntax directly in the msgstr:

# ICU plural embedded in single msgstr
msgid "{count, plural, one {# item} other {# items}}"
msgstr "{count, plural, one {# Element} other {# Elemente}}"

Comparison

Feature	Gettext Plurals	ICU in msgstr
Plural forms	✅ Index-based	✅ Named
Select (gender)	❌	✅
SelectOrdinal	❌	✅
Nested constructs	❌	✅
TMS support	✅ Native	⚠️ Requires ICU-aware tools
Translator UX	✅ Simple	⚠️ Must understand ICU syntax

TL;DR: Use native Gettext plurals for simple pluralization. Use ICU when you need select, selectordinal, or nested constructs.