i18n Readiness Review Skill

Localizing a product that isn't internationalized fails expensively — translators hit hard-coded strings, layouts break on longer languages, dates show in the wrong format, and RTL shatters the UI. i18n is the engineering groundwork; localization is the content. This skill audits whether the product is ready, so you fix the foundations before paying to translate into the cracks.

Required Inputs

Ask for these only if they aren't already provided:

• The product — web/app/codebase, stack/framework (i18n tooling differs).
• Target languages — especially if any need RTL (Arabic/Hebrew), CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean), or are long (German/Finnish).
• What you can share — code snippets, UI screenshots, or a description of how strings/formatting are handled today.

Output Format

i18n Readiness: product]

A readiness audit across the dimensions that break localization, each with status (🟢 ready / 🟡 partial / 🔴 blocker) and the fix:

| Dimension | Check | Status | Fix | |---|---|---|---| | String externalization | no user-facing text hard-coded; all in resource files / i18n keys | | move strings to a catalog; no concatenated sentences | | Formatting | dates, numbers, currency, plurals via locale-aware libs (Intl/ICU) | | use Intl/ICU; never string-format dates | | Pluralization | plural rules handled (not count + " items") | | ICU plural categories (some langs have 4–6) | | Layout/expansion | UI tolerates ~+30–40% text length; no fixed-width truncation | | flexible layouts, no text baked into images | | Encoding | UTF-8 throughout; CJK renders | | UTF-8 end to end | | RTL | layout mirrors for right-to-left scripts | | logical CSS properties, dir attribute | | Locale plumbing | locale selection, fallback, and persistence exist | | a locale resolver + fallback chain | | Assets/content | images with text, examples, names are swappable | | externalize locale-specific assets |

Prioritised fixes — the blockers (🔴) first (hard-coded strings, no Intl formatting, broken RTL), then 🟡s. These must land before translation begins, or you translate into a broken foundation.

Verdict — ready to localize / fix-blockers-first / not yet, in one line.

Quality Checks

• ] Checks string externalization (the #1 blocker) — no hard-coded or concatenated UI text
• ] Verifies locale-aware formatting (Intl/ICU) for dates, numbers, currency, plurals
• ] Assesses layout expansion (+30–40%) and RTL if a target needs it
• ] Confirms UTF-8 / CJK encoding end to end
• ] Prioritises blockers to fix before translation starts
• ] Ends with a clear ready / not-ready verdict

Anti-Patterns

• ] Do not start translating before i18n is ready — you'll translate into hard-coded strings and broken layouts
• ] Do not concatenate sentence fragments — word order differs by language; translate whole strings with placeholders
• ] Do not string-format dates/numbers — use Intl/ICU, or every locale shows them wrong
• ] Do not assume text length — German/Finnish expand; fixed-width UI truncates and clips
• ] Do not ignore RTL until late — retrofitting right-to-left into a left-to-right layout is a rebuild, not a tweak

Based On

Internationalization engineering practice — string externalization, ICU/Intl formatting & plurals, text expansion, RTL, UTF-8.