Infrastructure Decisions · judgement tool

Do I need i18n now?

Multi-market launch, non-English users and contracts decide full i18n — but the honest middle path (structure strings now, translate later) is usually right. Get a verdict with each factor's provenance shown.

A judgement tool, not a tool ranking · thresholds are StackSays rules, not industry standards · official facts verified 2026-07-17 · share the URL to share your answers

How to read this: every factor below is tagged by where it comes from — official fact official/documented · calculation math on your inputs · StackSays rule our decision logic · StackSays estimate our judgement. The verdict cut-points are StackSays rules, not an industry threshold — there is no universal traffic number for these decisions.

Your situation

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Launching in multiple languages nowday-one multi-locale requirementTarget users are non-Englishprimary market speaks another languageA customer/contract requires ita deal depends on localizationLots of UI/content textbig surface area of strings to translateStagehow far along the product is

Recommendation

Not yet

Based on the factors you set — 0 pushing toward adopting, 1 against.

Why it might be premature

-16 One market for now — No second locale in sight — building full i18n machinery now is premature; ship one languageStackSays rule

When to reassess

Add full i18n when a concrete second locale appears (a market, a contract). Until then the honest middle path is below.

Minimal implementation

If a second language is plausible but not imminent: keep user-facing strings out of the code (a strings file / i18n library like next-intl) without translating yet. That captures most of the retrofit savings at little cost. Full translation pipelines wait for a real locale.

Risk of not doing it

If you truly hardcode strings and later need locales, every screen needs re-touching — but building translation infrastructure with no second language is equally wasteful.

Cost & complexity once adopted

Low to structure strings for i18n early; high to run a full translation/localization pipeline (translators, locale routing, RTL, formatting). Match the investment to whether a real second locale exists.

This is a judgement tool, not a leaderboard. The StackSays rule and StackSays estimate factors are StackSays logic and opinion; the official fact factors link to official sources below. No industry-standard threshold is implied — the answer is driven by the conditions you set.

Official facts cited

Source	Verified
next-intl i18n docs (official)	2026-07-17

Only the factors tagged “official fact” rest on these sources; rules and estimates are StackSays logic and are labeled as such.

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