Building WaterWise for multiple languages started as a translation task and quickly became a design task. Swapping strings is the easy part. The assumptions baked into an interface are harder to see.
Text length breaks layouts
A short English label can become a long phrase in another language. Buttons designed to fit one word wrap awkwardly or overflow. We moved to layouts that expand with content rather than fixed-width elements sized around English.
Units and formats are not universal
Field area, volume, and date formats differ by region, and getting them wrong is worse than getting them missing, because a confident number in unfamiliar units invites a wrong decision. We handle unit preference as a first-class setting rather than a locale side effect.
Vocabulary is local
The hardest problems were conceptual. How people describe a plot of land, a growing season, or a watering event varies by region and farming tradition. Literal translations of agronomy terms sometimes produced phrases that were technically correct and practically meaningless.
Reviewing wording with speakers who actually farm changed a large share of our labels. Software cannot be localized purely by linguists, because the goal is not correct language. It is a recommendation someone will act on.