mittwald / mittwald/flow

Styleguide (flow.mittwald.de) in English?

Open
#3,152 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

documentation to-discuss
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
15
Forks
3
Avg merge
1d 17h
Merged PRs (30d)
184

Description

The Styleguide at https://flow.mittwald.de is German-only. Nearly everything
around it is English. Decide whether we switch it, mirror it, or keep it German
— and who carries the cost.

Why it comes up

  • The audience is not only mittwald. mStudio extensions are built by external
    developers, and the packages they consume are English throughout: READMEs,
    prop JSDoc, and an en-US locale next to de-DE.
  • The pages are already half English. Component and DS terminology, headings
    like Best Practices, and the generated props table are English by rule
    (apps/docs/README.md § Language). Only the prose is German.
  • The Styleguide is also what agents read (llms.txt, llms-full.txt,
    llms.json), so its language is the language that reaches consumer
    codebases.

What "in English" touches

  • 114 MDX pages, ~37k words: components 89 (~21k), foundations 11 (~6.3k),
    get-started 4 (~5.2k), patterns 9 (~4.4k).
  • apps/docs has no i18n: one route tree, <html lang="de"> hardcoded in
    layout.tsx, no locale switch, no message catalogue. App chrome carries
    German strings inline (DocsSearch/SearchDialog section descriptions,
    ComponentStatusCallout).
  • Derived artifacts are per language: the minisearch index, llms.txt,
    llms-full.txt, llms.json, sitemap.ts.
  • German URL segments: /patterns/patterns/anlegeprozess,
    /patterns/codesnippets/zeitintervalle,
    /foundations/content-guidelines/{sprach-guide,fehlermeldungen,informationskonzept}.
    Renaming them needs redirects — a different class than the NN- prefix
    rewrite already in nginx.conf.
  • The content guidelines themselves: apps/docs/README.md § Language and
    § Tone of Voice are written for German prose. They get rewritten, not
    translated.

The part that does not translate

foundations/content-guidelines prescribes German product copy
sprach-guide (wording, address form) and fehlermeldungen with German
Do/Don't examples. English prose about German wording rules works; the examples
stay German either way. This needs an explicit decision, not a default.

Options

A — Switch to English. One site, one route tree, no drift. Cost: a one-time
translation of ~37k words plus rewriting the content guidelines. German readers
inside mittwald (UX, product) lose their language.

B — Bilingual. i18n in apps/docs, locale-prefixed routes, two search
indexes, two llms.txt. Cost: every content change is written twice, forever,
and divergence is silent unless we gate it.

C — Keep German. Status quo. Revisit when external demand is measurable.

To decide

  1. Who is the primary reader — mittwald UX/devs, or external extension
    developers?
  2. A, B or C. If B: what keeps de and en from drifting?
  3. Content guidelines: translate, keep German, or split?
  4. Who writes and reviews the English? UX authors the content today.
  5. URLs: rename the German segments or keep them?

Related

  • #2867 — the docs serve people who build Flow more than people who use it
  • apps/docs/README.md § Language

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with apps/docs/README.md sections Language and Tone of Voice, then inspect layout.tsx, the app-chrome strings, generated artifacts, and the German URL segments listed in the issue. Done means documenting a decision among A, B, or C, including the content-guideline treatment, URL policy, and who will write and review the work.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript
Domain
content, documentation, internationalization
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.