Mozilla Localization in 2024
2024 was a year with plenty of achievements for the Mozilla localization community (here’s the 2023 report in case you missed it, or want to check how we fared against our original plans). Let’s start with the numbers first:
While the overall number of projects decreased, this is mostly due to removal of obsolete projects (we actually added a new one in November). The astounding increase in the number of locales is driven once again by Common Voice, which has 318 locales enabled in Pontoon.
Thank you to all the volunteers who contributed their time, passion, and expertise to Mozilla’s localization over the last 12 months.
At the start of the year, we focused on improving Pontoon’s performance — a less glamorous but essential part of maintaining an effective platform: if the platform doesn’t perform well, users can quickly lose motivation and stop contributing. To assess the current state, we used the Apdex score, a standard measure of user satisfaction for web application performance. Between January and March, we successfully raised the average score for our lowest performing transactions from 0.77 to 0.87, making significant progress toward achieving what is considered a “good” performance level. Later in the year, we also moved to a larger database plan to further improve performance.
In May, we launched our first LLM integration. Users now have additional options if they’re not satisfied with the suggestion provided by Google Translate. They can choose from three actions: Rephrase, to generate an alternative version; Make formal, to adjust the tone to a more formal register; and Make informal, to create a more casual version. These options are especially valuable for languages like German or Spanish, where tone can significantly impact translation quality and consistency.
