localization

What This Skill Does

The Localization (l10n) skill provides a comprehensive, engineering-focused framework for managing global product expansions. It moves beyond simple text translation, treating localization as a fundamental architectural requirement. This skill orchestrates the entire lifecycle of multi-language support, covering string extraction, ICU MessageFormat implementation, locale-specific data formatting (dates, currency, units), RTL (right-to-left) layout adaptation, and rigorous quality assurance workflows. It ensures that your application handles linguistic complexity—such as pluralization, gender, and grammatical reordering—programmatically, preventing technical debt and expensive UI breakage as you scale into new markets.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your environment, run the following command in your terminal:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/clawkk/localization

Ensure your project repository has necessary access permissions for the skill to scan your source code and extract string identifiers.

Use Cases

• Market Expansion: Planning a roadmap for launching an existing English-only application into multiple European, Asian, or Middle Eastern locales.
• UI Bug Remediation: Addressing visual regressions such as text overflow in German translations, broken RTL layouts, or incorrect currency formatting in Latin American markets.
• Translation Pipeline Automation: Setting up a continuous delivery workflow where new UI strings are automatically pushed to your TMS (Translation Management System) and pulled back into the codebase upon completion.
• Data Standardization: Converting hardcoded date/number logic into dynamic locale-aware components that adapt to regional user preferences.

Example Prompts

1. "We are planning to support Arabic (ar-SA). Can you help me audit our current layout components for RTL compatibility and suggest CSS changes to support mirroring?"
2. "I have a backlog of English strings. Help me extract these into a JSON-based namespace structure and implement ICU MessageFormat for the pluralized notification headers."
3. "Our German translations are breaking the layout in the settings menu. How can we implement a truncation strategy with tooltips while maintaining semantic integrity?"

Tips & Limitations

• Early Integration: The most critical tip is to apply localization logic during the design and development phase. Refactoring for l10n post-launch is significantly more expensive.
• Avoid Concatenation: Never build sentences by concatenating variables (e.g., 'You have ' + count + ' messages'). Always use full, keyed phrases with ICU placeholders to allow for grammatical reordering.
• Translator Context: Always provide translators with screenshots or descriptive metadata. A string like 'Save' can mean different things depending on context (e.g., a button vs. a noun).
• Limitations: This skill provides the architectural strategy and technical implementation guidance. It requires an existing Translation Management System (TMS) to manage the actual linguist/translator workflow.