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Internationalization and Localization Platform

2 posts · Mar 2019 – Aug 2022

What this trail covers

Spotify has significantly expanded its language support, growing from 26 to over 60 languages. This involved a comprehensive technical effort to adapt the existing architecture, automate quality assurance, and update backend services en masse. The project also emphasized strong vendor partnerships, cross-functional collaboration, and clear communication to achieve a rapid, large-scale localization rollout.

All Spotify trails
  1. Scaling Translations at SpotifyThis post details the technical efforts behind Spotify's 'Scaling Translations' project, which enabled the addition of 36 new languages. Key technical contributions include assessing the existing tech stack for pain points amplified by hypergrowth, digging through source code and metrics, defining required capabilities, and automating updates across 30+ backend services. The engineering team worked to defragment the tech stack and automate linguistic quality-assurance tasks for mobile apps.
  2. (Right to Left (The Mirror WorldThis post details the technical challenges and solutions for implementing Right-to-Left (RTL) language support, specifically for Arabic, in the Spotify desktop client and web player. It covers mirroring UI layouts using the `dir` attribute and CSS (Flexbox, Grid, PostCSS-RTL), handling exceptions for elements like media playback controls, addressing punctuation and truncation issues with mixed LTR/RTL text using the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm and `dir='auto'`, and considerations for Arabic fonts including letter spacing, font size, vertical cut-off, and capitalization. It also highlights the need for locale-aware separators for list items.