Translation used to be the expensive part of this job. Sixty CMS pages into German meant a per-word quote and a delivery date weeks out, so the translating was the whole conversation. Now the model you already pay for translates those 60 pages before lunch, and the cost has moved to everything around it: which locale field each version lands in, who reads the German before your German-speaking customers do, and what actually goes live when you press publish.
The fix is a workflow, not a better translator. Pull every page into files, source and target side by side. Let your agent translate the whole batch against one brief, so a term decided on page 1 still holds on page 60. Then put a person who speaks the language in front of every change before it ships. The options below disagree on three things: whose database holds the German, whether page 60 still obeys the glossary from page 1, and whether anyone reads a sentence before a customer does.
Your options
A translation management system
A TMS is the professional pipeline, and at professional scale it is genuinely good: translation memory so a sentence you paid for once is not bought again at full price, glossaries that lock terminology, translator and reviewer roles, and connectors that watch your CMS for changed source text and deliver finished translations back into the right locale on their own. The fit problem is shape and price. Pricing climbs by word, seat, and language, the jobs-and-files model is built for a localization department, and the connector becomes the source of truth: translations anyone types directly into the CMS can be overwritten on the next delivery. For 10 languages and outside translators, buy one. For your marketing site, it is a freight train for a grocery run.
Multilingual plugins and platform add-ons
On WordPress, this job lives in the multilingual plugin category, and the serious ones treat publishing as a real decision: translate the whole site automatically, then choose whether pages go live unreviewed, wait unpublished for review, or publish flagged for review. The translations are real posts in your own database, which is exactly where you want them. The friction is the meter and the review surface: automatic translation runs on credits, the support forums hold genuine disputes about what got counted, and review happens string by string in the plugin's editor. On Webflow, the platform equivalent is the Localization add-on, priced per locale, whose machine translation works one CMS item at a time and does not touch slugs. Solid inside one platform. The judgment is still nobody's job.
Machine translation that publishes itself
The proxy and JavaScript layers are the fastest way to a multilingual site: they detect new content as you publish it and serve translated versions automatically, no workflow at all. That is also the entire problem. There is no moment where a human reads the German before German-speaking visitors do, and Google's spam policy on scaled content abuse lists translating among the automated transformations it acts against when many pages add little value. Two quieter costs: most of these tools store the translations in their own dashboard rather than in your CMS, so leaving takes the languages with it, and the word meter runs whether or not anyone reads the output.
Copy-paste through a chat window
The model in the chat tab is the same one everything else on this page is wrapping, and for one page it is the right tool: paste the source, state the glossary, paste the result into the locale field. The batch is where it collapses. Sixty pages into 2 languages is hundreds of pastes across every field, the glossary you stated on Tuesday is gone from Thursday's session, rich text loses its markup somewhere in the round trip, and the only record of what changed is your scrollback. You are not running a translation workflow at that point. You are being the API by hand.
Scratch
Scratch wraps the publish workflow around the one-brief batch. Your pages come down as local files, your own agent translates all of them in one run, and the brief travels with the batch, so terminology can be checked across every file before a single page ships. Each translation comes back to a human as a word-level diff, with the source page one file away, and only approved pages publish to the right locale. The scope today is specific: Webflow multi-locale content, where Webflow exposes it, and Intercom translated content. WordPress translation belongs to the plugin category above, and Shopify translations are not yet supported. The trade is the review itself: a person who reads the language has to actually read the pages. That is the feature.
| Option | Whole batch in one run | Terminology held | Review before live | Translations live in your CMS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TMS platform | Yes | Glossary and memory | Yes, reviewer roles | Yes, but the TMS owns the truth |
| Multilingual plugin or add-on | On WordPress, yes | Engine glossary, if any | Optional, by publish mode | Yes |
| MT auto-publish | Yes | No | No | Often the vendor's dashboard |
| Chat copy-paste | One paste at a time | Drifts between sessions | Your own eyes only | Yes, by hand |
| Scratch | Yes, where supported | Your brief, checked across the batch | Every page, as a diff | Yes, your locale fields |
How the loop works on your pages
- Scratch pulls your pages into files. Every Webflow CMS item comes down to a folder on your laptop, with its locale content where Webflow exposes it. Every Intercom article comes down with its translated content beside the source. Source and target sit as files you can open. Your live site does not know any of this happened yet.
- Your agent translates the whole batch against one brief. Point Claude, Codex, Cursor, or Copilot at the folder. Translate all 60 posts into German and Spanish. Product names stay in English, "trial" is "Testphase" everywhere, keep the HTML structure and every internal link. Files are what make this a batch instead of a queue. Wired in through a chat tool, each page is its own paced call, and the finished batch never exists anywhere you can check it. On disk, the agent translates everything in one run, then greps the finished batch for the locked terms and fixes every page where the glossary slipped, in the same sitting.
- A reviewer reads every diff, and you publish. Scratch shows each translation as a word-level diff, with the source page one file away. Put someone who speaks the language in front of it; this is the step every auto-publish route skips. Approve a page and Scratch publishes it back to the right locale. The model did 99% of the work. The remaining 1%, deciding whether the German is something you would say to a German customer, belongs to a person who would know. Reversal works the same way after publish: reject a published page and the prior version is restored.
Run the first batch small: one locale, 10 pages. The day the reviewer reads a batch without finding a glossary slip is the day the agent gets the other 50.
Where this works today
The honest platform list is short.
- Webflow. Scratch edits multi-locale CMS content where Webflow exposes it, which means the Localization add-on with locales enabled on your collection items. Scratch edits the locale content that exists; it does not invent locales.
- Intercom. Help center articles, including their translated content. Conversations are pulled for context and stay read-only.
- WordPress. Scratch edits WordPress content, but translations there live in the multilingual plugin category, and the plugins are the right tool for that part today.
- Shopify. Translations are not yet supported.
If the missing platform is the one you need, tell Curtis. Connectors get built in the order people ask.
Questions people ask
Will Google treat bulk machine translation as spam?
It can. Google's scaled content abuse policy lists translating among the automated transformations it acts against when many pages add little value, and Google has also said AI-translated content is not automatically spam. The difference between those two readings is the value added, and the review step is where you add it: a person who speaks the language reads each page, fixes what reads machine-made, and decides it is worth publishing. Auto-publish routes skip exactly the part that keeps you on the right side.
How do I keep terminology consistent across the whole batch?
Twice. Once in the brief, where the glossary lives: the terms that stay in English, the term that always translates one way. Once in the check: because the finished translations are files, the agent can grep all of them for the locked terms in seconds and fix any page where the glossary slipped, before review starts. A reviewer reading 60 pages should be judging tone, not hunting for the one page that translated your product name.
Can I publish one language and hold another back?
Yes. Approval is per page, so the German batch can ship today while Spanish waits for its reviewer to get back. On Webflow, locales keep independent publish states, so going live in one locale does not touch the others.
Do I need Webflow's Localization add-on?
Yes. Locales are a Webflow feature, and Scratch edits the locale content Webflow exposes; it cannot create locales Webflow does not have. Webflow also has you enable secondary-locale content on existing collection items inside the Designer. Once the locales exist, the loop above runs across all of them.
What happens to slugs, links, and HTML inside the pages?
Nothing. The agent translates the fields you point it at and holds structure as a rule: keep every tag, keep every internal link, localize the slug where Webflow exposes it or leave it alone. Validators back the rule up, checking slug uniqueness and length caps before review starts, and the diff shows any markup that moved. Webflow's own machine translation, for comparison, does not touch slugs at all.
Can I undo a translation after it publishes?
Yes. Every published page is reversible from Scratch, per item. The previous version stays next to the translation, and rejecting a published page puts the old content back.
What does a TMS give me that this loop does not?
Memory, mostly. A TMS remembers every sentence it has translated, so a paid sentence is reused instead of bought again at full price. It also coordinates outside translators across big teams and runs reviewer sign-off across 10 languages as a managed job. If that is your operation, a TMS earns its price. If the job is your marketing site into 2 or 3 languages with one reviewer per language, the loop above is the same shape, run by the agent you already pay for, without the per-word meter.
Do I need to be technical?
No. You install a desktop app, connect your CMS, and write the brief in plain English, glossary included. The grep pass and the link checks are things the agent does with the files, not things you do. Reviewing is reading a tracked-changes view and clicking approve or reject, in a language you chose the reviewer for.
See it on your own pages
The convincing moment is a reviewer reading their own language on your own pages. See it run on your pages →, or download Scratch free, connect Webflow or Intercom, and have 10 pages translated into one locale by the end of the day. Scratch is free to try, and the AI is whichever agent you already pay for.