Localization

Translate a flow and send each user their own language.

#What localization does

Localization lets one flow speak every language your users do. You write your notifications once in a default language, add the languages you want to support, and provide a translation of each message. At send time Pushlane picks the language that matches the recipient's device and delivers that copy — automatically, per user. You do not build a separate flow per language.

Only the notification title and body are localized. Image, deeplink, and the other message fields are shared across every language.

#The Localization table

Open a flow in the builder and open the Localization panel from the left rail. It shows a table:

Rows — every message in the flow, split into its title and body (one pair per message variant), in the same order as the flow outline.
Columns — one per language. A new flow starts with a single column: your default language. Add language adds a column to fill in; you can pick from a suggested list or type any locale code.

The default-language column edits the very same title and body you see in the message inspector — it is the one source of truth for that copy. The extra columns hold the translations. Editing a cell here is the same as editing anywhere else in the builder: it is undoable, works in real-time collaboration, and is saved with the flow.

Heads up

Missing translations are flagged. If you add a language but leave a title or body empty, the flow raises a validation error — the same red chip in the top-right as any other setup issue. Clicking it opens the Localization panel on the empty cell. A localized flow can't go live until every language is filled in, so you never ship a half-translated message.

#Auto-translate

Filling every language by hand is optional. The Auto-translate button at the top of the Localization panel translates your default-language copy into all of your target languages at once, powered by Claude. It is written for push — natural, native-sounding copy at notification length, not a word-for-word machine translation.

Auto-translate is available on paid plans (Growth and up). On the free plan the button prompts you to upgrade. See Billing & usage for plans.
It spends AI credits from your monthly allowance. The exact cost is shown in Settings → AI credits.
By default it only fills the empty cells, leaving copy you have already written untouched. A Retranslate all option overwrites every cell.

Note

Tokens are preserved. Personalisation tokens like {{ first_name | friend }} are copied into every translation verbatim, so variables keep working in every language. If a translation would drop or mangle a token, Pushlane rejects that cell rather than ship broken personalisation — it stays empty and the missing-translation error points you to it.

#How the language is chosen at send time

Every event a device sends carries its locale — for example fr_FR — in the event context. Pushlane records it as the user attribute locale. When a localized flow reaches a message, the engine resolves the language from that attribute in three steps:

Step	Rule	Result
1 — Exact	The device locale matches a declared language exactly (fr-FR = fr-FR).	That language's copy.
2 — Language	The language matches even when the region differs (fr-CA → fr, or fr-FR).	That language's copy.
3 — Default	No declared language matches the device.	The default-language copy.

Example — a flow with default en + fr

device locale "fr_FR"  →  French   (exact / language match)
device locale "fr-CA"  →  French   (language match, region ignored)
device locale "de_DE"  →  English  (no match → default language)
no locale on the user  →  English  (default language)

Heads up

An uncovered language falls back to the default — never to invented copy. If a user's locale is one you did not add to the flow, they receive the default-language notification: a complete, correct message. Pushlane never machine- translates on the fly at send time and never guesses a translation. Auto-translate is the only thing that writes translated copy, and only into cells you can see and edit before the flow goes live.

#Where the locale comes from

You do not set the locale yourself. Every Pushlane SDK and drop-in reads the device's current locale and sends it in context.locale on each event. Pushlane normalises it (en_FR → en-FR) and stores the most recent value as the locale user attribute — no extra SDK call required.

Note

The locale is read from the stored attribute, not from the triggering event's properties — so it resolves correctly even for sends that happen days after the trigger (delays, schedule windows, send-time optimisation). A user has one locale at a time: the most recent one their device reported. This mirrors how personalisation variables are resolved from stored attributes.

Heads up

locale is a reserved system attribute name. You can set it yourself — Pushlane.setAttributes({ locale: 'fr-CA' }) is the supported way to honour an in-app language picker that differs from the OS language. Re-apply it on each app launch: the device projection also writes locale at launch and the most recent write wins, so a one-time override would be reverted by the next session. The value must be a BCP 47 tag (fr, fr-CA, pt-BR…). A non-locale value can't drive language selection: that user falls back to the default language until the device reports a locale again. Never reuse locale (or app_version, os_version, install_env) for unrelated custom data — the device projection and your writes share one value, most recent wins.