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Mouloudj Mohamed
Mouloudj Mohamed Subscriber

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How do teams actually handle localization during development, CI, or even docs?

I’m trying to understand how localization is handled across different parts of a product, especially in teams that ship frequently.

On the product/UI side, I’ve seen cases where:

  • new strings get merged without translations
  • some languages lag behind others
  • localization issues are only caught after release
  • CI has no real signal that something is missing or out of sync

On the developer-facing side (API docs, READMEs, docs):

  • docs stay English only even when the product is localized
  • translated docs go stale quickly as content changes
  • keeping multiple languages in sync is mostly manual

So I’m curious

  • Which of these is more painful in practice: product/UI localization or docs localization?
  • Do teams actively care about localizing docs, or is it usually not worth the effort?
  • Are there any localization-related checks or automation you rely on during CI or PRs?
  • What localization problems have actually caused real issues for we, developers, prioritizing docs or users?

Trying to figure out where localization tooling would provide real value versus being a "nice to have."

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