Preview before you ship

Goal: see how your interface holds up in another language before a single real translation exists. kapi fills every string with a longer, accented stand-in; load it into your UI and the labels that clip, the buttons that overflow, and the hard-coded strings (the ones that stay plain) are immediately visible. No API key, no waiting, no cost. Output defaults to the qps pseudo-locale, so no real target language is needed.

Try it right here: drop a file (or pick the JSON or Word sample) and kapi runs pseudo-translate in your browser:

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Desktop

Pseudo-translation is a quick tool, so no project is needed:

1. Open Toolbox → Tools, pick the pseudo-translate tool, and choose your source catalog.
2. Adjust the shape in the config form: prefix/suffix markers and expansion padding to simulate how much longer real translations run.
3. Run it and load the output file into your UI; anything un-accented was hard-coded instead of pulled from the catalog.

In a project, add qps as a target locale and pseudo-translation rides the normal flow; output lands on the language path like any locale.

Agent (Claude)

Fold it into the layout question you actually have:

Pseudo-translate our locale catalog and check which strings exceed 40 characters after expansion.

The assistant runs the tool, then sizes the result (kapi check --max-chars, kapi stats) and reports the strings likely to clip, a layout-risk review on top of the file transform.

CLI

One command; the output path is a name you choose:

kapi pseudo-translate messages.json -o messages.pseudo.json

To tune the markers and the padding, run the tool directly: kapi exec pseudo-translate takes --prefix, --suffix, and --expansion-percent, and the full flags are in the exec pseudo-translate reference. The same keys go under a flow step's config: (expansionPercent: 30). In a project, run it with no file argument to cover the recipe's declared content, or as the gap-filler step after content-memory leverage; see Reuse what you've translated.

Next

• Reuse what you've translated: pseudo-translation as the visible-gap step.
• Rule-based checks: the broader check families.