Choosing Between Public and Private Translation Projects

One of the first decisions a project owner makes when setting up localization is visibility: should anyone be able to view and suggest translations, or should the project stay invite-only? There's no universally correct answer — it depends on what you're building and who you want contributing.

The case for a public project

Open-source software and community-driven products often localize faster and into more languages by opening translation up to volunteers than they ever could with a small paid team. A public project lets anyone view the source strings and submit suggestions, while trusted maintainers still control what actually gets approved and shipped. This is how many widely-used open-source tools support dozens of languages despite having no dedicated localization budget at all.

Public projects also tend to surface native speakers you'd never have found by posting a job listing — someone who uses your product daily in Portuguese and cares enough to fix an awkward translation they noticed.

The case for a private project

Not everything should be crowdsourced. Unreleased features, anything under an NDA, internal tooling, or content with legal and compliance sensitivity (pricing, contracts, terms of service) belongs in a private project with translators you've specifically vetted and invited. The review workflow still applies the same way — contribution and approval as separate steps — but visibility is limited to people you've explicitly added as members.

A hybrid approach is common

Plenty of teams run both: a private project for anything commercially sensitive, and a public project for a specific open-source component or community-facing surface where wider participation genuinely helps. Nothing stops you from starting a project private and opening it up later once you've decided which parts of your product are ready for public contribution — visibility is a setting, not a one-way door.

What doesn't change either way

Regardless of visibility, the same safeguards should apply: contributions go through a review step before they're approved, project owners control who has reviewer or maintainer access, and a glossary keeps terminology consistent whether you have three trusted translators or three hundred volunteers. Visibility controls who can see and suggest — it shouldn't be the only thing standing between a suggestion and production.