Creating Translated Content from the CLI

Marmite's --new command now supports creating translations of existing content directly from the command line, and outputs structured JSON for easy scripting.

JSON Output

The --new command outputs JSON instead of a plain file path. This makes it easy to pipe results into other tools:

$ marmite myblog --new "Hello World"
{"file":"myblog/content/2024-11-26-12-34-27-hello-world.md","title":"Hello World","slug":"hello-world","date":"2024-11-26"}

Use jq to extract specific fields:

$ marmite myblog --new "Hello World" | jq -r .file
myblog/content/2024-11-26-12-34-27-hello-world.md

The JSON output includes all applicable fields: file, title, slug, date (posts only), tags, language, and translates.

Setting a Language

Use --lang with a two-letter ISO 639-1 code to set the language frontmatter field:

$ marmite myblog --new "Articulo en Espanol" --lang es

This creates a file with language: es in its frontmatter, which tells marmite to assign the content to the corresponding language stream.

Creating Translations

Use --translates along with --lang to create a translation of an existing post. Pass the slug of the original content:

$ marmite myblog --new "Ola Mundo" --lang pt --translates hello-world

Subfolder-based translations

When the original content is inside a subfolder, the translation file is automatically placed in the same folder with a language-code prefix:

content/
  hello-world/
    hello-world.md           # original (created with -d hello-world)
    pt-ola-mundo.md          # translation (auto-placed here)

This follows the subfolder translation convention. Marmite detects the language from the pt- filename prefix and automatically links the translations during site generation.

Root-level translations

When the original content is at the root of the content directory, the translation is also created at root level. The file includes language and translates fields in its frontmatter so marmite can link them:

---
language: pt
translates: hello-world
---
# Ola Mundo

Workflow Example

A typical workflow for creating a post and its translations:

# Create the original post in a subfolder
marmite myblog --new "Getting Started Guide" -p -d getting-started

# Add a Portuguese translation
marmite myblog --new "Guia de Introducao" --lang pt --translates getting-started-guide

# Add a Spanish translation
marmite myblog --new "Guia de Inicio" --lang es --translates getting-started-guide

The resulting structure:

content/
  getting-started/
    getting-started-guide.md
    pt-guia-de-introducao.md
    es-guia-de-inicio.md

All three files are automatically grouped as translations during site generation, with bidirectional links rendered in templates.

Flag Reference

Note: --translates conflicts with -d (directory), since the translation's directory is determined automatically from the original content's location.

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