Team Collaboration: Translate Together in Real-Time

Team Collaboration in Better i18n

Localization is a team effort. Developers add strings, translators provide language expertise, and product managers decide when to ship. Better i18n supports this workflow through role-based access control, AI assistant integrations via MCP, and a complete audit trail that keeps everyone accountable.

Role-Based Access Control

Better i18n provides RBAC at the project level. You can assign different roles to team members, controlling who can:

• View translations
• Edit and create translation keys
• Publish translations to the CDN
• Manage project settings and languages

Roles are scoped per project, so a team member can have different permissions across different projects in your organization.

Authentication is handled through GitHub OAuth, making it straightforward for engineering teams that already use GitHub.

AI Assistants via MCP

The MCP integration is where Better i18n's collaboration model extends beyond the dashboard. Two MCP servers are available:

@better-i18n/mcp -- 11 tools for translation management:

• listProjects / getProject -- query project status
• listKeys / createKeys / updateKeys / deleteKeys -- manage translation keys
• addLanguage -- add target languages
• getSyncs / getSync -- check sync status
• getPendingChanges / publishTranslations -- review and publish

@better-i18n/mcp-content -- 17 tools for content management (headless CMS features)

These work with Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, and Zed. Your team members can manage translations directly from their code editor or AI assistant:

"Add the key onboarding.welcome with value 'Welcome to the app' in English"
"What keys are missing in the checkout namespace?"
"Publish all pending changes"

The remote MCP URL is https://mcp.better-i18n.com/mcp -- no local server setup required.

GitHub Integration

When your repository is connected, Better i18n creates pull requests with translated JSON files whenever you publish. This means:

• Translation changes go through your normal code review process
• Developers can see exactly what changed in the diff
• Merging the PR deploys the translations alongside your code

Webhooks trigger on publish events, keeping your repository in sync automatically.

Audit Trail

Every action in Better i18n is logged in the audit trail:

• Key creation, updates, and deletions
• Translation changes with before/after values
• Publish events
• Language additions
• Role and permission changes

This gives your team full traceability. If a translation changes unexpectedly, you can trace it back to who made the change and when.

Dashboard Workflow

The dashboard serves as the central hub for translation work:

1. Key management -- browse, search, and edit translation keys organized by namespace
2. Language overview -- see coverage percentages for each target language
3. AI translation -- generate translations with glossary enforcement, then review before publishing
4. Publish -- push approved translations to the CDN or trigger a GitHub PR

Team members with the appropriate roles can perform each of these actions, while others can view status and progress.

CDN Publishing

Once translations are approved, publishing pushes them to Better i18n's CDN (powered by Cloudflare's edge network). Published translations are available at:

cdn.better-i18n.com/{org}/{project}/{locale}/{namespace}.json

This means translation updates can go live without redeploying your application.

What We Do Not Offer (Yet)

For transparency, here is what the collaboration features do not include today:

• No real-time collaboration -- there is no live cursor, presence indicator, or simultaneous editing. Team members work independently and changes are saved when submitted.
• No comment threads -- you cannot leave comments on specific translation keys or start discussions within the dashboard.
• No @mention system -- there is no way to tag team members or AI assistants within the UI.
• No configurable approval workflows -- beyond RBAC roles, there are no multi-step approval chains or sign-off requirements.
• No SSO/SAML -- authentication is GitHub OAuth only. Enterprise SSO is not available at this time.

Getting Started

1. Create your account and set up your organization
2. Invite team members and assign roles per project
3. Connect your GitHub repository for PR-based workflows
4. Set up MCP in your team's AI assistants for editor-based management
5. Define your Glossary to keep terminology consistent across the team

Better i18n gives your team the structure to collaborate on translations without replacing your existing development workflow.