When choosing the source and target language codes, keep a few things in mind.

Transifex currently supports over 450 language locales. Different language codes for the same languages are used in Transifex because they have to do with different frameworks that our customers use.

Some languages vary depending on which region it is spoken in. For example, English in the US differs from English in Australia, and French in France differs from French in Canada.

Our first suggestion would be to be as precise as possible and use a full locale property (e.g., “fr_FR”) instead of just a generic language (e.g., “fr”). It supports alternate spellings, date formats, and other differences between countries with a shared language.

It is especially relevant for languages like Spanish, French, and Portuguese with distinct locale differences (Spanish in Spain vs. Latin America, French in France vs. Canada, Portuguese in Portugal vs. Brazil).

If you know that you’re currently targeting the European market, it probably will make sense to set “es_ES” as a target language. There is a high chance that your company will grow and you’ll expand into the Latin American market, so down the road, you would need a new language to be added to your Transifex projects, specifically for Latam Spanish (“es_419”).

So, if you have a clear distinction from the beginning, it will always be easier for your internal teams and translators/vendors to know which language dialect they’re translating into.

Make sure that you and your team that will be managing content in Transifex stay consistent with the choice of languages, as it is linked to essential features in Transifex - such as Translation Memory and Glossary.

Transifex treats language codes “en” and “en_US” as different languages, so you need to make sure that you choose one (e.g., “en_US”) and use it as a source language across all projects.

The same applies to choosing a target language: if you chose “es_ES” for European Spanish, stick to it and use it across all projects; don’t use generic “es” in one of the projects.

Following these two simple guidelines will help you keep things organized and manageable. What we're trying to avoid is the situation when you'll have to explain to your internal teams and translators:

Look, in our iOS project, although it says “es”, it’s LatAm Spanish; while in the Android project, there is a separate "es_419" target language - this one is for LatAm Spanish, and then there is also “es”, but that one is for European Spanish.

Be precise and consistent, and managing your languages and translations will be easy!