Localizing our SaaS product

If you need Brazilian Portuguese, I am a native and a developer, DM and we can talk.

Disclaimer: I am working on https://github.com/inlang/inlang. An open-source translation management tool.

1. I think you know it but just in case: You need actual translators. Google Translate & Co are not good enough. As a matter of fact, SEO can be severely negatively affected source.

2. All i18n libraries are more or less identical. It's a "simple" key-value lookup based on translation files that live in the source code. Most even use the same syntax under the hood, namely ICU. You can't go wrong with any of them except for libraries that use their own syntax like typesafe-i18n. Because ...

3. The biggest pain with localizing software is maintenance. Each software update potentially requires translations. The most common approach are ... excel spreadsheets that developers have to send to translators. While it works, you should have a translation management platform instead. A translation management platform closes the gap between source code <-> translators. When your software gets an update, the translation management platform syncs the keys and thus translators know what to translate without touching the source code or contacting the developer. Choosing an i18n library that uses self-inveted syntax might prevent you from integrating a translation management platform in your stack. But ...

4. Have quality control. The common i18n libs do not even have typesafety. Happened to myself that I shipped an app with missing translations. Niche i18n libraries like typesafe-i18n solve type safety which is awesome. Otherwise, rely on the quality control of the translation management platform.

I would like to have a quick call to help you find the right solution(s) and learn more about your requirements. You can book a time slot here or slide into my dms on twitter @SamuelStros

This is probably overkill, but this is how Airbnb is doing it:
https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/building-airbnbs-internationalization-platform-45cf0104b63c

Hi mate. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/managing-multi-regional-sites

It's related to "Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites". I hope this is useful for you.

I think finding a good tool to assist your translators is also key. Ive previously used transifex and really enjoyed using it and its integration with source control. Definitely software that is worth the price tag. An alternative that also met my needs really well was weblate.

Some things I would keep in mind:

• Pay for a good translator. I'd rather use a product in english if the translation in my native language is half assed.

• Generally, the simpler your copy is, the easier it will be to translate.

• If you've relied on colour theory, keep in mind that different colours have different meaning depending on the region.

• If you use landing pages, you may find that the exact same page will perform differently in different regions. Don't be afraid to A/B test

If you don't want to spend time on it, go for Localazy.

No matter what framework you use, you can upload and download localizable files using simple commands localazy upload and localazy download or you know what, automate it and let your Github Action or CI/CD do that.

Also, you can order translations to the given languages from our professional human translators.

Whenever you upload an updated localizable file (JSON, YAML, whatever), we detect new and update texts and our professional human translators translate them - you don't need to do anything. It's fully automated but with the quality of human translators.

You can invite your users too to help you with translating to less important languages.