Surprisingly, the code that does this is upstream:

https://we.phorge.it/source/phorge/browse/master/src/infrastructure/internationalization/management/PhabricatorInternationalizationManagementExtractWorkflow.php

I think adding ->excludePath ("*/__tests__/*") after https://we.phorge.it/source/phorge/browse/master/src/infrastructure/internationalization/management/PhabricatorInternationalizationManagementExtractWorkflow.php$279 would work, but not sure what upstream uses that workflow for, if anything, and what their view on the matter is.

Or I guess I could propose that exact patch on Wikimedia Gitlab if you don't want to wait for upstream.

Thanks for investing! IMO upstream first makes sense so I filed a ticket at https://we.phorge.it/T15815 , and after applying https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/phabricator/translations/+/1028887 in a local upstream Phorge checkout I can confirm your one-liner patch does what it should, yay.

@Pppery: Would you like to propose your one-liner in upstream, or do you want me to do that?

Quick commit message proposal for upstream:

Make i18n string extraction ignore strings in test case files

Summary:
Do not extract strings from test case files for localization / translation.
They are not exposed to users, and localizing wastes translators' time.

Closes T15815

Test Plan:
* Install Wikimedia downstream `translations` extension via `git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/phabricator/translations` and put it on the same filesystem level as `phorge` and `arcanist`, and follow https://we.phorge.it/w/docs/extensions/install/
* Apply https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/phabricator/translations/+/1028887 on top, to make the `translations` extension work with upstream Phorge.
* In the downstream `translations` extension path, run `./export.sh`, then run `grep -r "__tests__" .` and get a list of `qqq.json` files with context for strings from test files.
* Apply this patch.
* In the downstream `translations` extension path, run `./export.sh`, then run `grep -r "__tests__" .` to verify that no `qqq.json` files include any strings from test files anymore.

In T363364#9773252, @Pppery wrote:

if you don't want to wait for upstream.

I vaguely hope that in late May or in June we'll pull/rebase a more recent Phorge upstream release into Wikimedia Phabricator (because still quite some downstream cleanup work on my list first, once I get to it among a bunch of other things). So I'd wait for upstream here ideally

For the records, we just pulled and deployed the 2024.19 upstream version in Wikimedia Phabricator.