Polyglot Parrot re-translates every key under a parent object when the added key uses a computed property name

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
68/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
typescript
Domain
internationalization

Research direction

Start with extractKeyFromPropertyNode and buildDotNotationPath in scripts/utils/TSCompilerUtils.ts, then inspect the translation workflow logs cited in the issue to confirm how changed paths are built. Trace how computed property names using CONST.NEXT_STEP.MESSAGE_KEY.* map to their constant values. Done when the workflow identifies only the added key and avoids re-translating sibling keys under nextStep.message.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

What happened

PR https://github.com/Expensify/App/pull/104973 added one new English string to src/languages/en.ts:

[CONST.NEXT_STEP.MESSAGE_KEY.APPROVE_ONLY_SUBMIT_BLOCKED]: ...

The Polyglot Parrot bot then produced a 118KB translation patch that re-translated all 16 keys under nextStep.message in all 10 languages. Most of those strings were already translated, so the patch mostly reworded them (one German string even got a zero-width space added).

Why it happens

The new key uses a computed property name, so the path builder cannot name it and falls back to the parent object:

The bot marks the whole nextStep.message object as changed and re-translates every key under it.

Evidence

Workflow run https://github.com/Expensify/App/actions/runs/41727931903 logs the wrong path:

🔄 Found changed path: nextStep.message
🔄 Paths to modify: nextStep.message

It should have been only the new key.

Suggested fix

Teach extractKeyFromPropertyNode to resolve computed keys of the form [CONST.NEXT_STEP.MESSAGE_KEY.SOMETHING] to the constant value they point to. Then the changed path points at the single new key, and the bot re-translates only that key.

Same symptom was reported before in https://github.com/Expensify/App/issues/80978, which was closed without this root cause.

Dominant language
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