Automatic Translation

Availability: Subscribed projects only.

Automatic Translation lets Locize translate newly created keys in your reference language into all target languages automatically — using Machine Translation (MT) or Generative AI (depending on your project setup).

• Only new keys are translated automatically.
• Existing keys are not translated automatically. To translate existing content, use Bulk actions (see below).

Enable Automatic Translation

1. Open your Project settings.
2. Go to EDITOR, TM/MT/AI, ORDERING.
3. In Cat settings, enable Enable the automatic translation Workflow.

How it works (what to expect)

Automatic Translation runs in the backend. After you save new keys in the reference language, translations will appear shortly after.

Each automatically translated key counts as a normal modification.

Trigger via API (and a powerful i18next workflow)

You can also trigger Automatic Translation via the API.
A particularly effective workflow is combining it with i18next’s saveMissing feature:

• Your app detects missing keys at runtime
• It pushes them to Locize automatically
• Locize translates them instantly (MT / GenAI), without a separate extraction step

➡️ Setup guide: Discover a Smarter Way: Automating i18next Translations with saveMissing and Locize AI

Important (i18next): When using saveMissing, make sure fallbackLng is set to the same language as your reference language in Locize.

Video reference: See this section

Tip: Define a Styleguide for your project to provide tone, formality, and audience context to all AI providers automatically.

Bulk translate existing keys

To translate already existing content, use the AU or Machine translation task in Bulk actions.

Related read: Using AI + human translations with Locize

The complete automated workflow

Combine saveMissing with Automatic Translation to create a fully automated localization pipeline:

1. Configure saveMissing in your i18next setup:

   Copy

   import i18next from 'i18next'
   import Backend from 'i18next-locize-backend'
   
   i18next.use(Backend).init({
     saveMissing: true,
     backend: {
       projectId: '[PROJECT_ID]',
       apiKey: '[API_KEY]'
     }
   })

2. Enable Automatic Translation in your Locize project settings (Project → Settings → EDITOR, TM/MT/AI, ORDERING → enable Automatic Translation Workflow)

3. Write code — when i18next encounters a missing key, it sends it to Locize automatically

4. Locize auto-translates using your configured provider with your styleguide, glossary, and translation memory as context

5. Translations go live via CDN — your app receives them at next load without any deployment

For teams using AI coding assistants: the MCP server's report_missing_keys tool is the equivalent of saveMissing for AI agent workflows. Learn more about the MCP server →

Automatic translations + review workflow

When you add a new key via the Locize UI and your project has the review workflow enabled for some languages, auto-translations for those languages are automatically routed through review. They appear as pending review and are only published after approval — no extra configuration needed.

When using the CLI, API, or MCP, auto-translations bypass the review workflow by default. To route them through review, use the autotranslatereview option:

• CLI: locize sync --auto-translate true --auto-translate-review true
• API: ?autotranslate=true&autotranslatereview=true
• MCP: Set autoTranslateReview: true on update_translations or report_missing_keys

Auto-translations will appear as review proposals for languages with review enabled. They are only published after approval in the Locize UI.

Example: react-i18next + saveMissing