Automating Mobile App Localization
Article Summary
Dmytro Khmelenko reveals how Freeletics turned localization from a bottleneck into a fully automated pipeline. The results? Measurable revenue spikes in newly localized markets and zero manual translation work.
Dmytro Khmelenko shares how Freeletics ships fully localized features every 2 weeks across 9 languages with 17 mobile developers. The company supports over 20 million users and saw significant revenue increases after localizing for markets like Italy and Turkey.
Key Takeaways
- Payments surged in Italy and Turkey immediately after launching localized versions
- CI jobs automatically sync translations from Transifex to platform-specific files daily
- YAML format keeps strings platform-independent with meaningful keys for context
- Monthly cleanup scripts detect and remove unused strings across all locales
- Developers only review and merge PRs instead of manually managing translations
Freeletics ships localized features across 9 languages every 2 weeks by automating the entire translation pipeline from request to integration to cleanup.
About This Article
Freeletics had to handle localization for over 20 million users across 9 languages. They needed to keep a 2-week release cycle with just 17 mobile developers, but manual translation work created errors and slowed down development.
Khmelenko's team set up an automated CI pipeline that used YAML-formatted strings, Transifex integration, and Python scripts. The system matched translations to the right files each day. Android got strings.xml files and iOS got Localizable.strings files, all without anyone having to do it by hand.
Developers no longer had to handle translations manually. They could just review and merge pull requests instead. Monthly cleanup scripts took care of removing unused strings across all locales automatically, so the team didn't have to spend time on that either.