🌍 Multi-language mode still teaches English words — build locale-aware curricula and complete i18n

[llinsss]

Problem

Selecting Spanish, French, German, or Chinese changes a handful of interface labels and the speech-synthesis locale, but the spelling curriculum remains English. The app then asks a non-English voice to pronounce English strings such as cat, dog, and yellow, while category names, age-level names, instructions, dashboard copy, and most controls remain English.

This makes the advertised “full translation + speech” behavior misleading and can actively teach incorrect pronunciation.

Evidence

• game.js defines a single English-only curriculum object for every age and category.
• advanced-systems.js contains UI string maps, but MultiLanguageSupport.setLanguage() only calls updateUI() and updateGameModeLabels().
• Only a small number of elements in game.html use data-translate.
• speakInLanguage(currentWord) applies the selected locale to the unchanged English word.
• updateAgeDisplay() renders English curriculum/category names directly.

Proposed implementation

1. Define a locale-aware curriculum schema with stable IDs and per-locale spelling, display text, phoneme/audio metadata, image description, and age/category placement.
2. Move all user-visible strings out of HTML/JavaScript into complete locale catalogs, including validation, instructions, dashboard, settings, achievements, and game-mode copy.
3. Make locale fallback explicit and visible; never silently pronounce English content with a different locale.
4. Prefer reviewed/recorded phonics audio where browser TTS cannot reliably teach letter sounds.
5. Persist locale per child profile rather than as one browser-global setting.
6. Add automated catalog-completeness and curriculum-schema checks, plus native-speaker review guidance.

Acceptance criteria

• Each advertised locale has a reviewed, age-appropriate word curriculum; unsupported locale/category combinations clearly fall back to English as a unit.
• The selected language controls the word, answer letters, speech/audio, category and level names, instructions, feedback, settings, and dashboard.
• No English word is sent to a non-English TTS voice unless that content is explicitly marked as English.
• Missing and extra translation keys fail CI.
• Locale switching cannot change the identity/history of already-recorded attempts.
• Documentation states the actual coverage and review status of every locale.

Testing notes

• Add unit tests for fallback resolution and locale persistence.
• Add an end-to-end pass that completes one word in every locale and asserts text, answer, and speech locale agree.
• Include CJK handling in letter segmentation; do not assume word.split('') is a pedagogically valid character model.

[johnvon1112]

Hi, I'd like to pick up this issue. Kindly assign

[grantfox-oss]

🦊 GrantFox — @johnvon1112 has been assigned to this issue as part of the Third Campaign campaign!

Next steps:

1. Open a Pull Request referencing this issue (e.g., Closes #21)
2. Your PR will be reviewed by the DogStark maintainers

Good luck! Track your progress on GrantFox.