Translation Quality Review

Translation Quality Review

Most i18n setups already catch a missing key mechanically. Nobody automates whether the translation that IS there reads naturally, uses consistent terminology, or is quietly still in the source language. This skill does that read-through, plus the layout risk that follows from verbose translations in narrower UI contexts.

Works on any multi-language site regardless of the i18n mechanism — the review operates on the rendered/extracted strings, not the storage format.

When not to use this

• Key-parity/missing-key checks → that's a mechanical, already-solved problem in most i18n setups (e.g. this project's own i18n-check.py). Confirm that's green first; don't duplicate it here.
• Launch-critical copy that needs a guarantee of fluency → a model read-through is a useful first pass, not a substitute for a native speaker or professional translator sign-off. Say so explicitly in the findings rather than implying a confidence level the review doesn't have.
• Layout breakage itself (as opposed to flagging the risk of it) → hand length-risk findings to responsive-visual-review to confirm visually; this skill only estimates risk from string length, it doesn't render anything.

Phase 0 — Scope

1. Which locales and which files/pages to review (default: every non-source locale the site ships, sampled across the same page set used elsewhere in the audit if one exists).
2. Confirm key-parity is already green (skip re-deriving that here — if it isn't green, that's a different, prior problem to fix first).
3. Identify the project's own style guide if one exists (tone-of-voice docs, per-language style notes) — read it before judging tone, since "correct" tone is project-specific, not universal.

Phase 1 — Per-locale read-through

For each non-source locale, compare every translated string against the source-language original and flag:

• Literal/awkward, machine-translation-sounding phrasing — reads correct word-for-word but unnatural in the target language.
• Placeholder/variable mismatches — a {name}/%s/{{count}}-style placeholder present in the source but missing, renamed, or malformed in the translation (this is a functional bug, not just a style issue — it can break at runtime).
• Untranslated leftover strings — still in the source language where a translation was expected.
• Terminology inconsistency — the same concept translated two different ways across different pages/keys in the same locale (confuses readers more than a single, consistently "good enough" choice would).
• Tone mismatch against the project's own style guide, if one exists.

Phase 2 — Length/layout risk

Flag strings where the translation is meaningfully longer than the source (rule of thumb: >30% longer character count) in UI-constrained contexts specifically — button labels, nav items, form labels, badges — not long-form body text, where extra length rarely breaks anything.

German and Finnish compound nouns, and French's typical verbosity relative to English, are the most common sources of this; don't assume it's isolated to any one language pair, though — check what the source language actually is for this project.

Hand any flagged strings to responsive-visual-review (or a manual screenshot check at the narrowest breakpoint) to confirm whether the length risk actually manifests as a visible break.

Phase 3 — Findings

Per locale, severity-ranked:

State explicitly in the report's summary that this is a model-assisted first pass, not a certified linguistic sign-off — recommend native-speaker review for anything flagged Critical or High before it ships, and for any locale that has never had a native-speaker pass at all.