Case Study: Protocol Labs achieves streamlined crowdsourced localization and minimal admin overhead with Transifex

Protocol Labs Leverages Crowdsourcing With Minimum Admin Process Overhead

Protocol Labs, the open-source research and development lab behind projects like IPFS, needed to localize many GUI tools and websites built across JS, Go, and Rust. Relying on a volunteer crowdsourced translation community, they struggled with organization, reviewer/collaborator management, and maintaining consistent terminology across multiple projects while keeping administrative overhead low.

By adopting Transifex, Protocol Labs centralized project management, implemented a shared translation memory, and automated GitHub syncs and notifications to streamline translator workflows; they also used clear key naming and ICU-formatted JSON for future-proofing. The result has been steady growth in requested languages and contributors, better user and developer onboarding, more consistent language across projects, and reduced admin effort while making IPFS more accessible to non‑English speakers.

Protocol Labs

Marcin Rataj

Protocol Labs