DataAI Nexus

Agents / Skills

Locale Test Matrix

Skill

Designs the test matrix that catches locale bugs before launch: which languages and regions to test against which flows, the known trouble spots per locale class, and the cases that find the date, plural and layout breaks.

Best for

  • Launching in new languages without testing all of everything
  • Catching the German-overflow and the day-month swap before users do
  • Making locale QA a repeatable checklist instead of hope

What you give it

  • Your target locales, your product's flows, and what is already translated

What you get back

  • The matrix: locale classes x flows, with full coverage where risk concentrates and sampling where it does not
  • Per-class trouble catalogues: what breaks in long languages, RTL, non-Latin scripts, different formats
  • Concrete cases with test data: the strings, dates, names and amounts that expose the classics

How it works

  1. Groups locales into risk classes (length-expanders, RTL, non-Latin scripts, format-divergent) — testing one per class catches the class's bugs.
  2. Crosses classes with flows by risk: input-heavy and money flows get full coverage; static pages get sampling.
  3. Equips each case with the data that exposes bugs: the ambiguous date, the zero-and-two plurals, the long compound words, the mixed-direction text.
  4. Keeps the matrix runnable: sized for a release cycle, with the per-locale catalogue as reusable checklist.

Example

You: We launch in German, Japanese and Arabic next quarter. Design the locale testing.

Result: The matrix: German as the length-stress class (full pass on all flows — found 7 overflow breaks), Japanese for non-Latin input and line-breaking (checkout and search full, rest sampled), Arabic as the RTL class (full pass — found the mirrored progress bar pointing backwards and the mixed-direction address form). Shared cases: the day-month-ambiguous dates, the 1-vs-many-vs-zero plurals, the name fields fed non-ASCII names. 41 cases total, runnable per release in half a day.

Limits — please read

  • Linguistic quality (is the translation GOOD) needs native reviewers; the matrix finds the mechanical breaks.
  • Cultural appropriateness review is flagged as its own pass where imagery and tone carry weight.
  • Pseudo-locale testing complements but does not replace real-locale passes; both have jobs.