Then there’s markup inside each paragraph, like links and such. You could do it right in the translation strings, but your translator then needs to know how to handle the markup, and you risk duplicating knowledge if you go as far as to hard-code link URLs. What I do is split up the translations, but keep them under the same key: en.yml1 2 3 4 log_in_or_sign_up: text: "%{log_in} or %{sign_up} to do stuff." log_in: "Log in" sign_up: "Sign up" header.erb1 2 3 4 5 <%= t( :'log_in_or_sign_up.text', log_in: link_to(t(:'log_in_or_sign_up.log_in'), login_path), sign_up: link_to(t(:'log_in_or_sign_up.sign_up'), signup_path) ) %> This way, the translator sees no code or markup (except for the i18n interpolation syntax) and there is no duplication.

You probably don’t want one translation key per sentence, though. It’s helpful for the translator to have context rather than a lot of short strings, and less fiddly on your part.

If you have more than one placeholder in a string, it is recommended that you use argument swapping. In this case, single quotes (') are mandatory : double quotes (") will tell php to interpret the $s as the s variable, which is not what we want.