Correct use for angular-translate in controllers

Recommended: don't translate in the controller, translate in your view

I'd recommend to keep your controller free from translation logic and translate your strings directly inside your view like this:

<h1>{{ 'TITLE.HELLO_WORLD' | translate }}</h1>

Using the provided service

Angular Translate provides the $translate service which you can use in your Controllers.

An example usage of the $translate service can be:

.controller('TranslateMe', ['$scope', '$translate', function ($scope, $translate) {
    $translate('PAGE.TITLE')
        .then(function (translatedValue) {
            $scope.pageTitle = translatedValue;
        });
});

The translate service also has a method for directly translating strings without the need to handle a promise, using $translate.instant():

.controller('TranslateMe', ['$scope', '$translate', function ($scope, $translate) {
    $scope.pageTitle = $translate.instant('TITLE.DASHBOARD'); // Assuming TITLE.DASHBOARD is defined
});

The downside with using $translate.instant() could be that the language file isn't loaded yet if you are loading it async.

Using the provided filter

This is my preferred way since I don't have to handle promises this way. The output of the filter can be directly set to a scope variable.

.controller('TranslateMe', ['$scope', '$filter', function ($scope, $filter) {
    var $translate = $filter('translate');

    $scope.pageTitle = $translate('TITLE.DASHBOARD'); // Assuming TITLE.DASHBOARD is defined
});

Using the provided directive

Since @PascalPrecht is the creator of this awesome library, I'd recommend going with his advise (see his answer below) and use the provided directive which seems to handle translations very intelligent.

The directive takes care of asynchronous execution and is also clever enough to unwatch translation ids on the scope if the translation has no dynamic values.

EDIT: Please see the answer from PascalPrecht (the author of angular-translate) for a better solution.

---

The asynchronous nature of the loading causes the problem. You see, with {{ pageTitle | translate }}, Angular will watch the expression; when the localization data is loaded, the value of the expression changes and the screen is updated.

So, you can do that yourself:

.controller('FirstPageCtrl', ['$scope', '$filter', function ($scope, $filter) {
    $scope.$watch(
        function() { return $filter('translate')('HELLO_WORLD'); },
        function(newval) { $scope.pageTitle = newval; }
    );
});

However, this will run the watched expression on every digest cycle. This is suboptimal and may or may not cause a visible performance degradation. Anyway it is what Angular does, so it cant be that bad...

Actually, you should use the translate directive for such stuff instead.

<h1 translate="{{pageTitle}}"></h1>

The directive takes care of asynchronous execution and is also clever enough to unwatch translation ids on the scope if the translation has no dynamic values.

However, if there's no way around and you really have to use $translate service in the controller, you should wrap the call in a $translateChangeSuccess event using $rootScope in combination with $translate.instant() like this:

.controller('foo', function ($rootScope, $scope, $translate) {
  $rootScope.$on('$translateChangeSuccess', function () {
    $scope.pageTitle = $translate.instant('PAGE.TITLE');
  });
})

So why $rootScope and not $scope? The reason for that is, that in angular-translate's events are $emited on $rootScope rather than $broadcasted on $scope because we don't need to broadcast through the entire scope hierarchy.

Why $translate.instant() and not just async $translate()? When $translateChangeSuccess event is fired, it is sure that the needed translation data is there and no asynchronous execution is happening (for example asynchronous loader execution), therefore we can just use $translate.instant() which is synchronous and just assumes that translations are available.

Since version 2.8.0 there is also $translate.onReady(), which returns a promise that is resolved as soon as translations are ready. See the changelog.