Laravel localization in German Deutsch

Locale codes

Set the base locale in config/app.php. For regional variants, German commonly uses: de_DE, de_AT, de_CH, de_LU

// config/app.php
'locale' => 'de',
'fallback_locale' => 'en',

// Or switch at runtime
App::setLocale('de');

Plural rules: what German actually needs

CLDR defines 2 cardinal categories for German. The sample numbers below were computed by ICU for this exact locale:

Laravel's trans_choice() maps numbers to 2 pipe-separated forms for this locale:

// lang/de/messages.php
'items' => ':count item|:count items'

// Usage
trans_choice('messages.items', $count, ['count' => $count]);

Try any number live in the pluralization tester.

Localized dates with Carbon

Real output for German (de locale), generated by Carbon for March 21, 2026:

$date = now()->locale('de');

$date->translatedFormat('l, j F Y');
// "Samstag, 21 März 2026"

$date->isoFormat('LLLL');
// "Samstag, 21. März 2026 14:30"

$date->isoFormat('L');
// "21.03.2026"

$date->subDays(3)->diffForHumans();
// "vor 3 Monaten"

What to watch out for in German

• Du/Sie formal-informal distinction must be decided before translating UI copy.
• All nouns are capitalized, three grammatical genders, and four cases affect articles and adjective endings.
• Long compound nouns are common; leave room in buttons and labels to avoid truncation.
• Decimal comma (1.234,56); Swiss German (de_CH) uses ss instead of ß and apostrophes as thousands separators.

Framework strings already translated

Laravel's own validation, auth and pagination strings are maintained in German by the open-source Laravel-Lang project (MIT). Install them, then manage your app's own strings live:

composer require laravel-lang/common --dev
php artisan lang:add de
php artisan lang:update