rosey.app

What It Is

Rosey is an open-source static website translation management tool, with the current documentation version at v2.3.10. Rather than running as a plugin for a specific framework, it works after Hugo, Eleventy, Jekyll, or another static site generator has finished building the site. Rosey reads the final HTML, extracts content for translation, and then merges translation files to generate multilingual static sites.

Core Capabilities

Rosey’s core approach is to mark translatable content in HTML using attributes such as data-rosey, data-rosey-ns, and data-rosey-attrs. It supports element text, content blocks containing HTML, HTML attributes, image replacement, and JSON file translation. The generate command creates base.json, while build uses language JSON files in the roseys/locales structure to generate directories for each language, adding SEO metadata such as content-language and hreflang, as well as language-preference redirect pages. The check command can detect translations that are missing, outdated, or unused.

Pricing and Ecosystem

The main documentation clearly describes Rosey as an open-source tool, but does not provide details about its license, enterprise edition, or commercial support. It can be used via npx rosey, and the rosey-cloudcannon-connector NPM package is also mentioned. In terms of ecosystem, it can be combined with translation APIs such as Smartling and with CloudCannon CMS, either for machine translation or to provide a GUI workflow for non-technical translators.

Pros and Cons

The main advantage is that Rosey is decoupled from any specific SSG and does not require i18n to be deeply integrated into the template system. Hard-coded text inside components can also be translated through markup, and translation resources can be reused across websites. The final output is a purely static site, making deployment straightforward. The downside is that creating translation files is not part of Rosey’s core functionality, so larger projects may need to build middleware or integrate an external platform. It also requires developers to actively add markers in HTML/templates, which creates some migration cost for existing sites.

Best Fit and Access from China

Rosey is well suited to development teams using Hugo, Eleventy, Jekyll, Astro, and similar tools to build documentation sites, marketing sites, or content sites, while still wanting to preserve a static deployment model. If a team already has a translation API, CMS, or internal localization workflow, Rosey is better positioned as the extraction and merge layer in the build pipeline. The source text does not provide information on access from China, so domain availability, NPM installation speed, and payment availability for external translation services all need to be tested in practice. Alternatives include the built-in i18n features of various SSGs, Smartling, CloudCannon, or a self-developed JSON translation pipeline.