Modern projects are often scattered around various platforms and built with different stacks, e.g., developing a separate version of your app for Android, iOS, and web individually. Their localization often leads to duplicated efforts and costly manual work, especially when the projects can't share the same localizable files, and 1:1 conversion is not an option (more on that later).
🔌 Introducing Connected Projects
If you utilize a multi-platform approach like this, you probably currently have your translation files stored in various formats with different contents for each platform. Or, you might have also wondered how to better manage translations across all of your supported platforms. That’s where Connected Projects come in handy.
Once you set everything up, Connected Projects keep your translations in sync without any extra steps needed. This speeds up the translation process by automatically approving matching translations and allows all projects to tap into one central glossary.
You can also connect projects that serve different purposes. As long as they overlap in strings used, your translations will get more efficient.
The connection is bidirectional and transitive, which means that connected projects receive translations from each other. Also, if project A is connected to B, and project B is connected to C, then A might also receive translations from C and vice versa.
✔️ Translation matching
For example, if you have a string with a matching key and text such as book: ‘Book’ in source translation files for both projects, the translations for those texts are approved automatically.
On the other hand, if you have a book: ‘Book’ in one project and reserve: ‘Book’ in the other one, the translation will be offered for review in the second project because, while they are similar, the context might be different.
You can get Connected Projects and save tremendous amounts of time. And, once you activate Connected Projects, you can connect as many projects as you want.
❔ How to activate Connected Projects?
Connected Projects are an advanced feature and are available with the Professional plan and higher tiers. You can activate a 7-day trial of the Professional plan to try Connected Projects and other advanced features before you commit.
See pricing for options
Then, open one of your projects and go to Settings -> Connected Projects. You should see the following screen with the configuration.
Add as many as you want and watch the magic happen!
🤩 What do our users say about Connected Projects?
“I was always thinking about how to easily sync my translations for my Android and iOS mobile app versions. Both of the apps require different workflow, and the language files have their own requirements. Localazy Connected projects allowed me to connect my two Localazy integrated apps and easily sync translation changes across both of them. This not only saved my time but also increased user experience because of improved translation quality.”
“Our SaaS solution does have several software layers, and each of them does have its requirements when it comes to language localization. There were three main pain-points for us, where Connected projects came as a solution. The first one was technical - our backend runs on a different technology than the frontend. But both store some localizable strings. The second was about integrity - keeping translations with more occurrences precisely the same across the software layers. Third - developers no longer have to manage localization. All of their work was to integrate with Localazy, and now even our marketer or hired contributor can submit correct translations and push them closer to production without spending dev manhours.”
🔃 Format conversions
Suppose your goal is to convert localizable files from one format to another directly. You can do so with the Format Conversions feature, which is also a part of the Professional plan.
With the feature enabled, you can start using new commands in the Localazy CLI tool to convert your localizable files into different formats.
See the available options and formats in the documentation.
Read our guide on How to convert localization files into different formats.
🚀 Ready to get started?
Getting started is simple! First, sign-up and integrate Localazy with each one of your apps. Then, choose which apps you want to connect and activate the Connected Projects feature, available with the Professional plan.
If you are looking for more details, go ahead and read more about Connected Projects in our documentation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://localazy.com/blog/multi-platform-localization-localazy-connected-projects