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7 Comments

Would you tackle internationalization as part of your MVP?

I recently launched the first part of my app, but I was wondering if it would be worth it to stop the second part of my launch and tackle first internationalization in order to maximize possible growth.

Or should I first launch everything, and after that's done I can star thinking of internationalization?

What has been your experience?

Thanks

  1. 2

    Completely depends on your product and market - but my 2 cents is just remember implementing i18n will obviously take some work, but then it will also be an ongoing "tax" you need to take into account for all future features.

  2. 2

    I think it's totally your choise. Sometimes internationalization is crucial for MVP, sometimes is not.
    As for my project, I made some small preparings for other languages support (I included and set up i18n module, but no more than that), so if my project is successful, then I'll add new languages easily.
    Anyway it didn't take a lot of time.

    1. 2

      If possible, could I know a bit more about the way you implemented it? Anything in particular with your stack?

      From my initial view it seemed a bit complicated to implement, what was your experience with this i18n module?

      1. 1

        I use Vue.js, so I just typed 'npm install i18n', then I turned i18n plugin on.
        Now I have one file 'en.json', where my texts are located with keys, for example: { "greetings": "Hello!" }. When I need to show some text, I use syntax $t('greetings'). So it's not complicated at all.
        If you need more info, feel free to ask!

        1. 2

          I'm using NextJS, will have to take a look at what plug 'n play options are there! Thanks for the insight!

  3. 1

    From my experience, I can remember that it was a great problem when we developed projects with English only and it requires more languages later. It costs us about 3 times more. Even our MVP before multilingual features does not have a value. Because if you switch the project to multilingual, you think differently. I don't say about a very simple project with interfaces and text pages. But when you use well-structured data, you understand that about half of the properties not needed other languages anymore. So you will define it during the project's growth, and not before. For example, if you have a Lenght property, it will be reasonable to use it multilingual, but the value shouldn't be. And if you use units - not sure if you need languages for it.
    Everything should be working differently from the beginning. Text search, filtration, shortage of text, etc.
    That is why we started our nocode platform Tabbli as multilingual from the early stage.

    1. 1

      That's a piece of great insight. Will take it to heart. Thanks for taking the time to answer.

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