Lokalise is a project-based translation management system. A project organizes everything you need for translating your app, website, or game. It includes the languages you're translating into, the keys (text placeholders), the actual translations, and any screenshots linked to those keys for context. It also keeps track of contributors who have access and all relevant project settings.

Usually, each project covers translations for one app, website, or game. For convenience, it’s a good idea to keep keys and translations for all platforms (like iOS, Android, web, backend) in the same project. This way, you can manage everything in one place, rather than splitting it into multiple projects.

Every project belongs to one team. A team acts as a container for all its projects, users, and settings. Each team has its own subscription plan.

A team includes multiple projects and defines how users and subscriptions are managed. Keys and translations always stay within the project they belong to, while users and settings are managed at the team level.

To create a project, open the main dashboard and click New project:

Lokalise doesn’t currently have a "project templates" feature, but there are two easy alternatives to achieve similar results:

After pressing New project, you'll be asked to choose the project type:

Currently, we support three project types:

You can find all the supported file formats in the corresponding articles collection. Please note that you cannot change the type after the project is created.

After choosing the project type, you'll be presented with the following dialog:

Let's discuss the available options (most of these can be adjusted after the project is created):

Once you are ready, click Create project and a new project will be created for you!

Each project has a unique alphanumeric ID that is generated upon project creation. Each project URL contains this ID, for example:

You can also find this ID in the project settings:

Please note that the project ID cannot be modified.

This ID is used when referring to a project with Lokalise API or CLI. If you are not planning to use these developer tools, then most likely you won't need the project ID and knowing only its name should be enough.

That's a good question! The next steps will depend on what you are trying to achieve. Let's explore some options.

You might want to adjust your project settings. To do that, click More > Settings in the top menu:

Here you can change your project name, description, enable or disable additional features, create project snapshots (backups), set up automation rules, and perform other actions.

After adjusting your project settings, you'll probably want to upload your content to start translating. Go to the Upload page:

Here, you'll need to choose one or more files to upload and adjust the uploading settings.

When creating the project, you have already chosen one base language and one or more target languages. Also, when you upload translation files, all missing languages will be created automatically in your project. However, you might still need to add even more languages, and this is very simple to do.

Click on the Languages dropdown and choose New language:

Then choose one or more languages from the dropdown and click Add:

Once you've uploaded one or more translation files, you can return to the project editor:

One important question is: what happens once my translation file is uploaded to Lokalise? How will my data be stored and organized?

First of all, let's discuss some important terminology.

This is a file that contains your translation data. It can be a regular DOCX file or a JSON file that stores data in a key-value format.

A translation key is commonly used in key-value formats to act as a placeholder in your app’s source code. When the app is served to the user, the key is replaced with the corresponding translation value based on the user’s language settings (locale).

For example:

Keys in documents

The concept is slightly different for document-type files (e.g., DOCX, PPTX), which don’t use key-value storage. In these cases, Lokalise automatically generates alphanumeric keys for every translatable part of the document.

For example:

This approach ensures every part of the document is trackable and can be translated seamlessly.

A value is basically a string of text translated into a single language. One translation key can have multiple translation values depending on how many languages you are planning to support.

So, if your Lokalise project has five languages, then every translation key will have five translation values.

In Lokalise, a platform is an attribute you can assign to a translation key. There are four platforms available:

Every key must be assigned to at least one platform, but you can assign the same key to multiple platforms if needed. This is especially useful if you’re working on both a web app and a mobile app that share the same translations.

A platform determines which file formats a key will be exported in. When you download translations from Lokalise, you’ll select an output file format. Lokalise supports over 20 formats, organized by platform.

For example:

If a key is assigned to the Web platform, it will be included when exporting .json files but skipped for .strings files—unless you override this behavior.

When you upload your translation files to Lokalise, the platform parses the files and extracts all key-value pairs, along with any additional attributes like comments, descriptions, or extra metadata. Based on the file format, the extracted keys are automatically assigned to the appropriate platforms.

This automated process ensures your translations are organized and ready for further editing, managing, or exporting.

Keys and values will be displayed in the following way:

So, what's happening here?

Now we can create a simple hierarchy:

If you're working with a team, then you'll need to invite more people to the project, right? To do that, go to the Contributors page:

Here, you'll be able to add one or more people to the project and adjust their access rights.

Now that the contributors are invited, you'll probably want to assign some work to them. To do that, go to the Tasks page:

On this page, you'll be able to create a new task, choose translations to include, and assign this task to specific contributors.

If your content was initially hosted on a third-party platform, like a GitHub repo, WordPress website, or Zendesk Guide, you'll probably need an easy way to perform content exchange. That's why we've introduced Lokalise apps that enable you to connect with numerous services and tools easily. To get started, go to the Apps page:

Choose one of the apps and install it!

After you're done working with translations, you'll probably want to download them back to your project. To do that, go to the Download page:

Here, you'll need to choose an output file format, the language to include, and adjust other options.

We archive inactive teams and the corresponding projects on a regular basis. However, all your data is still preserved. Please check the Archiving inactive teams article to learn more about this process and how you can unarchive your projects.