Brain Decisions
2026-07-17
D007: Translations: build-time AI from English
Context: D006 - i18n Seven Languages and RTL needs 6 non-English catalogs. Saif said translations come from English.
Options considered:
- Runtime translation, kills performance, SEO, caching. Rejected.
- Manual human translation only, highest quality, slowest/costliest.
- Build-time AI translation (Claude) from the
encatalog, committed as static files, human-reviewed per locale.
Decision: build-time AI translation (chosen by Saif).
Why: SEO-clean + cacheable like human translation, cheap + fast like machine. English stays the single source of truth; a build script regenerates the others. On-brand for Saif's AI skills.
Trade-offs: raw AI output needs a review gate before going live (esp. RTL/Nastaliq line-breaking + diacritics). Documenting that human-review gate is itself a mature-AI-usage signal. See Internationalization.