Laravel localization in Malay Bahasa Melayu

Locale codes

Set the base locale in config/app.php. For regional variants, Malay commonly uses: ms_MY, ms_BN, ms_SG

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

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

Plural rules: what Malay actually needs

CLDR defines 1 cardinal category for Malay. The sample numbers below were computed by ICU for this exact locale:

Laravel's trans_choice() maps numbers to 1 pipe-separated form for this locale:

// lang/ms/messages.php
'items' => ':count'

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

This language has no grammatical plural, so a single form covers every number.

Try any number live in the pluralization tester.

Localized dates with Carbon

Real output for Malay (ms locale), generated by Carbon for March 21, 2026:

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

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

$date->isoFormat('LLLL');
// "Sabtu, 21 Mac 2026 pukul 14.30"

$date->isoFormat('L');
// "21/03/2026"

$date->subDays(3)->diffForHumans();
// "3 bulan yang lepas"

What to watch out for in Malay

• No plural inflection (optional reduplication: buku-buku) and no verb tense conjugation.
• No grammatical gender; polite second person Anda is common in formal UI copy.
• Malaysia uses the decimal point with comma thousands separator (1,234.56), unlike Indonesian.

Framework strings already translated

Laravel's own validation, auth and pagination strings are maintained in Malay 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 ms
php artisan lang:update