Apr 18, 2019 at 2:45 PM Mozilla releases Fluent 1.0, a localization system for natural-sounding translations
Mozilla yesterday announced the version 1.0 release of Fluent, a system for localization that the non-profit currently uses for localizing its flagship Mozilla Firefox web browser.
In the blog post announcing the release, Fluent project lead Staś Małolepszy detailed why and how Mozilla uses Fluent to overcome the myriad of challenges they face when localizing Firefox into nearly 100 languages. Instead of the archaic limit of translations that map one-to-one to the source language (in Firefox's case, English), Fluent enables support for the syntax and grammar of other localized languages with complete independence from the software's source language. All of this is done without any impact to the source code, nor does the logic of any specific grammatical quirk exclusive to one language impact any other supported language.
Małolepszy states that asymmetric localization allows for "defining the syntax for the entire text file in which multiple translations can be stored, and by allowing messages to reference other messages." Fluent files can be opened up in any text editing software, and its syntax guide can be found on its official website.
Fluent is completely open source, with its source code now available on GitHub.
Further coverage: Mozilla Hacks
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