Translation Placeholders: Enable Word Order Flexibility for Localizers

๐Ÿ“– 1 minute read

When defining translation strings in Laravel, always use named placeholders (like :count or :percent) instead of positional ones or manual string concatenation.


// Bad
__('You have ' . $count . ' notifications');

// Good
__('You have :count notifications', ['count' => $count]);

Different languages have varying word orders; named placeholders allow translators to move variables within the sentence without breaking the logic or requiring code changes for each locale.

Daryle De Silva

VP of Technology

11+ years building and scaling web applications. Writing about what I learn in the trenches.

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