I18N Translation Using AI

Internationalization (i18n) is at the heart of making software truly global. Traditionally, translating i18n files relied on either human translators or machine translation tools. AI-powered translation brings a new level of accuracy and developer-friendliness. Let’s explore why.

Context Awareness

Conventional machine translation often misses subtle context. Take this example of a JSON localization file:

{
  "pixie.definition": "She is a small imaginary person.",
  "dialog.pixie.answer": "I found it..."
}

A naive translation tool may translate the second line as He found it in languages where gender matters in verbs, because it fails to connect She from the previous string or even from the key pixie. AI, however, can recognize this context and preserve meaning correctly.

Understanding i18n Formats

AI is code-aware:

• It understands placeholders ({name}, %s, etc.)
• It correctly handles plural forms.

There are many i18n formats with specific syntax, and many languages with complex pluralization rules. Getting both right at the same time is challenging.

ICU Message Format Example:

{
  "inbox.count": "You have {count, plural, one {# message} other {# messages}}"
}

A naive translation tool might break the syntax or miss plural forms. AI, however, can preserve the format while adapting to the target language.

Our AI-powered solution for the i18n translation not only preserves the format but also generates the correct plural forms for complex languages. For instance, translating the same key into Arabic produces all necessary plural variations automatically:

{
  "inbox.count": "لديك {count, plural, zero {لا توجد رسائل} one {رسالة واحدة} two {رسالتان} few {# رسائل} many {# رسالة} other {# رسالة}}"
}

Supporting Less Common Languages

AI can provide quality translations for languages like Uzbek, Kazakh, Georgian, and other less commonly supported languages where human translators are scarce. Traditional agencies often don't even offer localization for these languages. AI bridges this gap — it can deliver high-quality translations even for less common languages.

Cultural and Regional Adjustments

Languages are not uniform across regions. The same language can have different expressions, vocabulary, and even politeness levels depending on the target audience.

For example, Spanish is spoken across Spain, Mexico, Argentina, and many other countries — but each region uses different words for everyday things.

• Computer:ordenador (Spain) vs computadora (Latin America)
• Car:coche (Spain) vs auto/carro (Latin America)

AI-powered translation, however, can adapt output to regional variants when instructed — choosing vocabulary that fits the cultural context of your audience. For developers, this means you can localize the same app differently for es-ES (Spanish for Spain) and es-MX (Spanish for Mexico), without needing separate human teams.

Fixing Grammar

Sometimes, source strings themselves contain typos or awkward grammar, especially if developers aren't native speakers or team doesn't have editors. AI can improve grammar during translation, producing more natural, polished results.

Handling Large Files and Avoiding AI Pitfalls

Even a well-prompted GPT model can make mistakes. For example, if you directly upload a huge file into an AI model, it starts adjusting content to fit its context window limitations — shortening, merging, or even omitting details. As a result, some context gets lost, and translations become less accurate.

l10n.dev solves this problem by splitting content into manageable chunks while keeping links and context between segments. This ensures translations remain consistent and accurate, even for very large i18n files.

Quality Checks

l10n.dev performs additional checks to ensure translation quality:

• Detects and retries translation if placeholders or formatting are lost.
• Ensures the output file structure matches the input, preserving key order and hierarchy.
• Automatically adds all required plural forms for the target language.

For example, in i18next format, it generates additional plural strings with the correct suffixes.

These checks ensure that translations are not only accurate but also compliant with the source format, reducing the need for manual fixes.

Developer-First Features

For developers, translation quality is only half the story. Workflow matters just as much. That's why l10n.dev is built with developers in mind and provides features such as:

Why We're Building This

Internationalization(i18n) and localization(l10n) are critical components of modern software development. In every project — games or enterprise apps — i18n and l10n were either a growth driver or a blocker. That's why we created l10n.dev: an AI-powered service that makes localization faster, smarter, and developer-friendly. Internationalization allows products to grow faster by reaching global users, and with AI, localization becomes even faster and more scalable.

🚀 Whether you're a developer, product manager, or localization engineer, adopting AI-powered i18n translation can save time, reduce errors, and unlock new markets more efficiently.