In software development and localization, translation keys are placeholders for text strings requiring translation. This guide will explore the importance of appropriately naming translation keys and provide tips and best practices to improve your workflow.

Overall, localization is an important consideration in software development, as it allows products to be more widely adopted and used by a global market. In addition, it improves the user experience for non-native speakers, builds a positive reputation for the company, and increases its revenue and growth. Unfortunately, software localization has been a source of difficulty for developers, with the challenge of creating and managing localization strings, integrating with external libraries, and more.

Adir, a software engineer at Microsoft, has a passion for improving productivity for himself and others. So he decided to develop a search application called Fluent Search as an open-source side project about three years ago. Over the years, the project grew bigger and gained popularity from users around the world. Let’s explore how Adir, as an individual developer, responded to user demand and made the strategic decision to translate his app into foreign languages. By doing so, he was able to tap into new markets, increase his user base, and take Fluent Search to the next level.

We are excited to announce the release of our Figma plugin. Our plugin has been specifically designed to help you streamline your localization process, making it faster, easier, and more efficient than ever before.

In the tech world, you may come across a few confusing acronyms. Those number-based words are called numeronyms. They are often used to abbreviate long words. Just take the first and last letter and count the letters in between.

Reducing the size of your production bundle can be a significant challenge, particularly when it comes to including unnecessary code. Libraries like React, React Query or Redux include useful developer tools, but they exclude them on production where it would be just an unnecessary bulk. It is not a new problem, but it is hard to do when you don't have a deep knowledge of different build systems. In this article, we'll explore a solution to this problem that involves including developer tools conditionally, based on the environment in which the package is being used.

Software localization is the process of translating software applications and user interfaces to accommodate users in different geographical regions. By doing this, you can expand your market reach and better serve your international customers. Software localization should be part of your overall strategy if you're considering expanding your business into new markets. Yet, it also brings many challenges during the process. In the second part of the article, we'll have a look at how to overcome them successfully and make the software localization process as smooth as possible.

We are proud to share that we have released the new versions of Tolgee Platform v3 and Tolgee JS v5. We have added namespaces support to structure your strings into smaller chunks. The base library of our JS integrations is completely redesigned to be more lightweight end extendable by plugins.

Context is crucial for software localization as it allows translators to understand the content in its proper context and thus produce an accurate translation. Without context, a software translation can be inaccurate and lead to user confusion or errors. In some cases, the context can completely change the meaning of what is being translated, so it is essential to have a good understanding of the text's context before starting the localization process.

When we did a market analysis in Tolgee, we asked many companies how they solved localization in their project. We asked them what's their i18n tooling. Surprisingly a lot of companies maintain their custom solution. I've also set up f5bot to e-mail me when the i18n keyword appears in posts or comments on Reddit. Again, a lot of people share their custom i18n libraries or solutions. In this article, I want to explain why I recommend against creating your custom solution and show what challenges you will face when you decide to do so.