Where This Idea Came From

Let’s kick off this article with the origins of our plugin and the thinking behind it.

After working on several large-scale localization projects, we kept noticing the same recurring issue: everyone, from developers to designers, wastes an enormous amount of time creating and searching for translation keys. The process is tedious, and unless you build a custom solution, there’s no tool out there that truly speeds things up.

The people involved in this problem weren’t always the same, but here’s a list of the key struggles teams face when dealing with translation key generation and management (maybe you’ll relate to some of them!):

🔹 Developers spend way too much time manually creating keys, trying to avoid duplicates, inconsistencies, and naming conflicts while ensuring coherence in naming conventions.

🔹 Designers lack visibility, making it difficult to track key associations and modify content without disrupting workflows.

🔹 Product Managers often end up managing key creation themselves. Every company handles localization differently, and in many cases, PMs are directly responsible for keys, facing the same challenges as the other roles.

Now, let’s focus on translation. Traditional translation workflows are cumbersome and time-consuming managing glossaries, adjusting terms project by project, sorting through translation keys… It’s a real headache that slows teams down and impacts the user experience. It’s time for a faster, more efficient approach.

For developers especially, having direct access to localization keys within Figma is a total game-changer (at least for us, it’s obvious).

A Two-Step Approach

After identifying this issue and talking to over a hundred people in the industry, it became clear that we needed to build a product to eliminate this wasted time. That’s why we decided to create a Figma plugin that automatically generates translation keys.

If you’re wondering why Figma, check out this article where we detail our approach and decisions: Revolutionizing Localization: Our Journey, Challenges, and Ambitions

More broadly, our plugin simplifies localization directly within your digital product workflow. But we didn’t stop there. We wanted to go one step further by contextualizing translations, ensuring that every word and phrase is translated while preserving the tone, meaning, and nuances of your content no matter the target language.

Through real examples, we’ll show you the difference between key-by-key translation and truly contextualized translation.

Translation Key Generation

Let’s start with the first part of the plugin: automated translation key generation.

What can you do with it? We developed several features to make translation key management easier:

• The plugin analyzes existing keys to avoid duplicates and understand your project’s naming conventions.
• It automatically generates keys while taking into account the context (which is super important) of your design file.
• It displays keys directly in Figma, making integration seamless.

Here are the three key principles we focused on to ensure we built a product that truly solves real-world problems:

🔹 Contextual key generation: No more incomprehensible key names based on random frame titles. Our AI understands what each text element is and how it’s used. A login button will always be identified as such, no matter where it is in your file or what the containing frame is named.

🔹 Smart duplicate prevention: No need to hunt down twenty versions of “Submit.” Our system recognizes that “Sign in,” “Login,” and “Log in” mean the same thing and manages them intelligently either by reusing existing keys or creating a relevant new one.

🔹 Seamless integration in Figma: Key management is no longer abstract and disconnected. With Gleef, you can view and manage your keys directly in Figma without switching between multiple tools.

Translation Key Localization

Now, let’s dive into the second part of the plugin, which is finally live! Key localization. Our goal? Helping you deliver a flawless user experience and a perfectly localized product.

This new feature allows you to choose the target language for your translation keys. Once a key has been created contextually, you can now translate it with the same level of contextual awareness. And the real news is that you do not even need to generate keys before translating, meaning you can use our Figma plugin just for translations purpose!

At first glance, translation seems easy with today’s AI advancements. Off-the-shelf, LLMs already outperform tools like Google Translate and DeepL (read the article). But if you work in localization, you know it’s not just about translation. It’s about adapting content to cultural nuances while ensuring accuracy and consistency.

Consistency is key: ensuring that the same concept is translated the same way throughout the user journey. For example, in French, ordonnance and prescription mean the same thing, but switching between them confuses users.

Unlike traditional translation memories, which mechanically reuse old translations, our system is much smarter. Conventional memory tools only recognize exact matches if two sentences are similar but not identical, they won’t be linked.

Our dynamic memory detects semantic similarities, ensuring consistency every time. We generate final translations that are immediately usable, integrating global context from the start. The result? Fewer corrections, fewer back-and-forths, and a much smoother process.

We’re constantly improving our AI to further accelerate the process while maximizing quality. Our goal is to remove friction between teams, particularly when it comes to marketing touchpoints and translation key management.

Our Vision & What We Want to Bring

If there’s one thing we haven’t talked about enough, it’s context. It’s a joke and at the same time not. I know I’ve been talking about context all the time, but you might understand how important it really is.

Context is at the heart of our approach. We strongly believe that context is crucial for accurate and relevant localization.

Take translation, for example: The word “cloud” has multiple meanings depending on the context. If context is ignored, you risk ending up with the wrong translation. The same applies to key generation adding context during key creation allows us to produce more relevant, reusable, and easily searchable keys, drastically improving localization efficiency.

Our product wouldn’t exist without AI. But for us, AI isn’t just an extra layer it’s deeply integrated into our process.

Unlike existing tools, we deeply verticalize our services, allowing us to inject rich context at every step of the workflow. The result? Fewer frictions, more fluidity, and a 10x better quality-cost ratio.

Curious to see how we compare to existing solutions? Check out this article: Why Traditional Localization Tools Are Failing

We’re convinced that localization shouldn’t be a roadblock it should be an asset for product teams. Our AI-first approach saves time, prevents inconsistencies, and integrates seamlessly into the workflow of designers and developers.

We’re continuously improving Gleef based on user feedback, so if you have ideas or specific needs, let us know. Together, we’re shaping the future of localization.

Conclusion

This plugin is the result of countless discussions, real-world testing, and most importantly your feedback. We want to build the localization tool you actually need, not another outdated, rigid system. And we’re just getting started we’ll keep improving based on your input. Tell us what you think! Gleef – Streamline Localization in Your Figma Workflow

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