# Cannot customize some site texts

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/cannot-customize-some-site-texts/387463
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [November 3, 2025, 2:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cannot-customize-some-site-texts/387463 "2025-11-03T14:45:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 7

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![pangbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pangbo/32/538562_2.png) [@pangbo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pangbo)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2025, 6:58am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cannot-customize-some-site-texts/387463/7 "2025-11-06T06:58:50Z")

</div>

@sam, thank you for your response. I’ve deployed three Discourse instances using different methods, and all exhibit the same issue, leading me to believe it’s not an installation problem.

Upon re-examining my plugins, I discovered that one of them created a locale file (`plugins/XXXX/config/locales/client.en.yml`) with the following content:

```yml
en:
   js:

```

Deleting this file resolved the problem. After a brief investigation into the I18n implementation, I found that `deep_merge` is used to merge translations during loading:

```ruby
    # File activesupport/lib/active_support/vendor/i18n-0.4.1/i18n/backend/simple.rb, line 31
31: def store_translations(locale, data, options = {})
32: locale = locale.to_sym
33: translations[locale] ||= {}
34: data = data.deep_symbolize_keys
35: translations[locale].deep_merge!(data)
36: end

```

The YAML above is parsed as:

```json
{"en": {"js": null}}

```

This results in the deletion of the entire content under the `en.js` key after the merge. As a plugin developer, I understand that this issue stems from my own coding error, and I am fully responsible for it. However, I believe Discourse could benefit from additional checks to warn against such occurrences, especially considering that Discourse already has a design for inspecting locale files, as seen [here](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/lib/i18n/locale_file_checker.rb).

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