GPTranslate: On-Asset Localization

Translating ad layouts is one of those tasks that sounds straightforward until you’re actually doing it. You’re moving between Figma and Google Sheets, copying strings out, sending them off, waiting, getting them back, re-entering them, checking that nothing broke in the layout. For a campaign running across eight markets, that’s a lot of cycles before you even get to QA. The ask from Spotify’s advertising team was simple: can we get to a first draft of every language and let QA refine from there? So we built GPTranslate — a Figma plugin suite that handles translation directly on the canvas.

Four modes for four different problems

Translate is the primary mode. Select one or more frames, scan for text elements, pick your target languages, and the plugin generates a duplicate frame per language positioned to the right of the original. It respects safe area layer names so logos, icons, and locked elements stay untouched. It also applies language-appropriate casing rules automatically — AP Style title case for English headlines, sentence case for Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian, and German sentence case with proper noun capitalization.

Constrained is built for social copy with hard character limits. It reads placement layers that contain character limit metadata — “LinkedIn Headline (43/70 characters)” or “Facebook Primary Text (120/125 characters)” — and translates within those constraints. Platform is detected from the placement text so tone adjusts accordingly. Visual emphasis layers like Headline-Framed and Highlight are preserved through translation, so the structural hierarchy of a design doesn’t collapse when the language changes.

Analyze proactively flags translation risk before you run anything. It scans your layout for fixed-width text that might overflow, tight element spacing that won’t survive longer strings, and missing responsive constraints. It outputs a visual report with a flexibility score and specific recommendations — essentially a pre-flight check for internationalization.

Crocs is an experimental version being tested on a separate campaign, extending the same approach to a different brand context.

Why it matters

The goal was never to replace translators. The goal was to stop asking them to work from scratch on every language. A first draft that’s 80% right — with correct structure, proper casing, and character constraints already respected — is a fundamentally different starting point than a blank sheet. QA can focus on nuance and brand voice instead of basic accuracy. That changes the whole rhythm of a localization workflow.