Originally Posted by Duugu
So, what do you think? Is adding a machine translation a good idea? Or is it even worse than showing english texts if there's no localized data?
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Worse. Add a note to your download page indicating which languages you need translations for, and then just show English for any untranslated strings. Mangled machine translated garbage is not useful for anyone.
That said, for single words, using a dictionary or machine translation is probably fine. Google in particular will show you a list of possible translations, along with a list of English words each translation is used similarly to, so you can easily figure out which is the best option.
And for common phrases like "font size" or "background color" you can just copy from another addon.
If you're posting your addon on Curse too, I highly recommend adding all your translatable strings on the localization tab of your project page, and leaving them open so that anyone can submit translations. You don't need to be using the CurseForge/WowAce packager to use the localization system there -- when you want to update the translations in your addon, just use the "export" feature and copy/paste the whole batch into your addon file. The only downside is that there's no notification of any kind when someone adds or updates a translation, so you have to remember to check on it before making a release.
In my experience, you're most likely to get Chinese (both varieties), Russian, German, and occasionally French translations. I've
very rarely had anyone send me Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese translations. Even Grid didn't get full Italian translations for probably 2 years after Blizzard launched the Italian version of WoW. I'm not sure if players in those languages just don't use very many addons, or if they all speak English and just don't prefer their native language strongly enough to bother with translations, or what. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯