Pseudo Translate tool
The Pseudo Translate tool produces fake translations that exercise a
product's localization without a real translator. It replaces ASCII letters
with accented look-alikes, wraps each segment in marker characters, and can
pad the text to simulate the length growth of a real translation. The result
reveals hard-coded strings, clipped layouts, and encoding problems before
translation begins. A target language is required (the conventional pseudo
locale is qps).
Inline codes and placeholders are protected: text inside {...} markers and
non-text runs are passed through unchanged so the runtime can still substitute
parameters. The transform is deterministic, so the same input always yields
the same output.
See it transform
Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
expansionPercent | integer | 0 | Extra padding percentage added to simulate translation expansion (0 = no padding) |
prefix | string | ▒ | Characters prepended before each translated block |
suffix | string | ▒ | Characters appended after each translated block |
Configure these parameters interactively and copy the flow-step YAML on the Tool Reference.
Examples
Standard pseudo-translation
Pseudo-translate to the conventional qps locale.
prefix: "▒ " suffix: " ▒"
Simulate 30% expansion
Pad output to surface layout clipping.
expansionPercent: 30
Processing notes
Operates on translatable blocks with a non-empty source; other parts pass through unchanged.
Inline codes and placeholders are preserved; the prefix/suffix wrap the whole segment once.
With a session cache, already-pseudo-translated targets are reused and fresh results are written back.
Limitations
Only ASCII letters are accented; other characters and content inside
{...}placeholder markers are passed through unchanged.
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