Polyglot

Prep your product for internationalisation 🌍

1 follower

A common problem when internationalising a product is not allowing enough space for the translated text. Polyglot will give you an indication of how much room to allow. Inspired by the excellent article Design for Internationalisation.
Polyglot gallery image
Polyglot gallery image
Launch tags:
Tech
Launch Team

What do you think? …

Matt Hardy
When is the sketch plugin available?
Matt Anderson
@matthardy If there's interest i'll look into it 😊
Matthew Boogaard
@matthardy @mattanddesign How cool are Matt's though?
Matt Anderson
@matthardy @boogsau haha, the best!
Anthony Da Mota
French flag is not correct! 😢
Matt Anderson
@akdm_ Fantastic find thankyou! Just pushed up a fix 😊
Ben Flowers
I like the project - super useful for label translations etc.. what is the source for the translation? Side note - sorry to be that guy.... but English should be a Union Jack rather than an American flag? Or it should be split into en_GB and en_US e.g. colour vs color
Sam Goudie
@benoj @mattanddesign Flags look great, but they're unfortunately not a good indicator of language. Do you go for a Brazilian flag for Portuguese because it's population is higher? That being said, this project looks lovely and a helpful resource for designers dipping their toe into i18n. Great job 🙌
Matt Anderson
Thanks @benoj and @sgoudie! It uses the Microsoft Translator API—found it to be more reliable than Googles offering. Yeah i'm a little conflicted about that. Another example is Spanish which is spoken in many countries other than Spain. I tried a few other approaches, such as language codes, though I found flags to be a really good visual cue. I'm certainly open to suggestions if you had any? 😊
Eri O
@benoj @mattanddesign @sgoudie "they're unfortunately not a good indicator of language. Do you go for a Brazilian flag for Portuguese because it's population is higher?" Yes. That's exactly what we do for Portuguese: (https://goo.gl/HcWaWR). Just curious and seeking some insight: why would you say that flags are not a good indicator of language?
Sam Goudie
@benoj @mattanddesign @h3ricopt4 It's a trade off certainly. I think in the case of Polyglot, the flags add to the light and accessible feel of what you've built. We decided not to use flags for our interface because we have users around the world. The general UX principle I've always followed is flags communicate countries not languages. It's a matter of opinion certainly, and in the case of Polyglot I think you've made the right decision! Sometimes sticking to the 'correct' way can rob your product of personality.
Matthew Boogaard
@benoj British English > American English