What it means
project.english-only binds this repository to one working language, and version 2 names one
population apart: a page of the published site written for a reader in that reader's language
(ADR 0077). Everything else is unchanged — a comment, a commit message, a rule, a document
under docs/ must be English, with no exceptions.
The permission is not "the site tree is exempt". It is per page, and it costs three declarations that must agree with each other.
How it works
scripts/ci/english-only-check allows such a page only when all three hold:
- It is published content. The path is under
site/content-src/, the authored source of the site, or is that page's generated projection undersite/content/. A translation entry naming anything else makes the check refuse to run. - It is declared with a reason.
translation <path> <language> <why>inscripts/ci/english-only-allow.txt, in the same shape as the two older kinds. An entry with no reason is a list entry, not a declaration, and is refused. - The page says the same thing. The page's own front matter carries
lang = "<language>", and the check compares the two. A page that declares nothing, or declares a different language than the list claims for it, is refused.
The third condition is the one that makes this an exemption rather than a loophole. An allow list is a file anyone can append to in order to silence a finding; requiring the file itself to say what it is means an entry that is not true of its page cannot pass.
How to see it
$ scripts/ci/english-only-check --strict
english-only-check: every authored file is spelled in English (N measured, N declared fixtures, N declared translations)bash test/run.sh 403_published_translation proves each refusal by mutation: an undeclared
page in another language still fails, a declaration without a reason is refused, a declaration
outside the published site is refused, a declaration the page does not agree with is refused,
and a declared translation exempts its own file and not its neighbour.
What it does not cover
The check is an alphabet test, in version 2 exactly as in version 1. It decides letters that occur in Czech, Slovak or Polish and never in English, and whole non-Latin scripts. English prose carrying a sentence of another language spelled in ASCII passes it, and always will, so the rule stays wider than the gate.
It also does not decide whether a translation is good, whether it says the same thing as its counterpart, or whether the two contradict each other. Nothing in this repository decides that today; it is review.
Why it matters
The alternative to a typed exemption is one of two worse things: a repository that cannot publish a word to a reader who does not work in English, or a baseline file that launders foreign prose into "known debt" and stops meaning anything. Naming the permitted case, and making the page and the list check each other, keeps the gate strict everywhere it was strict before — which is what makes it still worth obeying.