Yii2 Internationalization with code instead of a whole sentence - yii2

Question

I'm currently working on internationalization for a website using Yii2.
Usually, I use it like this:
Yii::t('frontend', 'Do you have something to eat?')
Then, I have two folders in common\messages called en-EN and id-ID. Each has frontend.php inside of it.
en-EN/frontend.php
return [
];
id-ID/frontend.php
return [
'Do you have something to eat?' => 'Ada yang bisa dimakan?'
];
It works fine, but I don't think it's practical because the sentence is too long and one character miss will not work.
So I tried using something like this:
Yii::t('frontend', 'My.Random.Sentence');
en-EN/frontend.php
return [
'My.Random.Sentence' => 'Do you have something to eat?',
];
id-ID/frontend.php
return [
'My.Random.Sentence' => 'Ada yang bisa dimakan?'
];
It only works for id-ID, but when I change back to english, it still displays My.Random.Sentence instead of Do you have something to eat.
This is my config in i18n.php
return [
'sourcePath' => __DIR__. '..' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . '..' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . '..' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR,
'languages' => ['en-EN','id-ID'],
'translator' => 'Yii::t',
'sort' => false,
'removeUnused' => false,
'only' => ['*.php'],
'except' => [
'.svn',
'.git',
'.gitignore',
'.gitkeep',
'.hgignore',
'.hgkeep',
'/messages',
'/vendor',
],
'format' => 'php',
'messagePath' => __DIR__ . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . '..' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'messages',
'overwrite' => true,
];
And this is in frontend/config/main.php
if (session_status() == PHP_SESSION_NONE) {
session_start();
}
if (!isset($_SESSION['lang']))
$_SESSION['lang'] = 'en-US';
return [
// other options
'language' => $_SESSION['lang'],
'sourceLanguage' => 'en-EN',
'components' => [
'i18n' => [
'translations' => [
'frontend*' => [
'class' => 'yii\i18n\PhpMessageSource',
'basePath' => '#common/messages',
],
'backend*' => [
'class' => 'yii\i18n\PhpMessageSource',
'basePath' => '#common/messages',
],
],
],
],
//other options
];
Is this not possible? What is the correct way for my problem?

Answer 1

By default, i18n component doesn't translate the string when $sourceLanguage and $language are same. Instead it returns the source string.
But fortunately you can force it to translate the strings even when the $sourceLanguage and $language properties are same. To do that you need to set $forceTranslation property of MessageSource to true. You can do it in you frontend/config/main.php like this:
return [
// other options
'components' => [
'i18n' => [
'translations' => [
'frontend*' => [
'class' => 'yii\i18n\PhpMessageSource',
'basePath' => '#common/messages',
'forceTranslation' => true,
],
// ...
],
],
],
//other options
];