I’m currently using Transifex to manage localization for my Texas Roadhouse menu website, and I’ve started running into several issues that are making it difficult to maintain accurate and consistent translations. The site supports multiple languages, and all menu items, descriptions, categories, and dietary labels are managed through Transifex resources. While the setup worked smoothly at first, I’ve recently noticed that updates made in Transifex don’t always propagate correctly to the live site, even after a successful sync. Some strings update as expected, while others remain stuck in older versions without any obvious errors.
One major problem seems to involve source string updates. When I update or slightly rephrase menu descriptions in the source language (English), Transifex sometimes treats them as entirely new strings rather than updated ones. This leads to duplicated entries and missing translations in other languages. For a content-heavy site like a Texas Roadhouse menu, where small wording changes happen often, this becomes difficult to manage. I’ve tried adjusting string keys and enabling “replace existing translations,” but the behavior still feels inconsistent and unpredictable.
Another issue is related to context and pluralization rules. Some menu sections use dynamic values (e.g., “1 side” vs. “2 sides”), and although I’ve configured plural forms correctly in my source files, the translated versions sometimes render incorrectly on the site. In some languages, the plural rules seem to be ignored entirely. I’m not sure whether this is caused by how I’m defining placeholders in the source strings or by how Transifex exports localized files back to my repository.
I’m also encountering problems with asynchronous syncing. I use the Transifex CLI in a CI pipeline to pull translations before deployment, but occasionally the pipeline completes successfully even though some translation files are incomplete or missing entries. This leads to partially translated pages on the live site, which is especially noticeable on the Texas Roadhouse menu pages where consistency matters for user trust. The logs don’t show any errors, so it’s hard to tell whether the issue is API latency, caching, or something else.
Another challenge is handling fallback behavior. When a translation is missing, I expect the site to fall back to the default language. However, in some cases, the UI displays raw translation keys instead (e.g., menu.steak.ribeye.title) instead of English text. This suggests a mismatch between resource identifiers in Transifex and the keys expected by the frontend. I’ve double-checked naming conventions, but the issue still occurs sporadically and seems to depend on which language bundle was loaded first.
Overall, I’m trying to understand whether these issues stem from my Transifex configuration, the structure of my localization files, or the way my application loads and caches translations. If anyone has experience managing large, frequently updated content like restaurant menus with Transifex, I’d really appreciate guidance on best practices for key naming, syncing workflows, and preventing translation drift. Keeping the Texas Roadhouse menu consistent across languages is critical, and I’d love to get this workflow stabilized. Sorry for long post
