[chiefalchemist]

> I don't feel that it's deteriorating as much as that tech in general never properly understood how to do good localisation.

Yes and no. The majority of my experience with localization is via WordPress. Frankly, it's a PITA. Another thing to know, and so on. It's not an extension so to speak, it's another mountain to climb, another silo to wrestle with.

Furthermore, and yes this is unique to WP, it make no effort to leverage it's scale. Certainly, once (e.g.) 'Add to Cart' has been translated and vetted, it doesn't need to be done again. You should be able to submit your language file, have it parsed and spit back fleshed out as much as possible. Then you need only to focus on the bits that didn't find a match.

Yes. Some increase in understanding is in order. But an updating and upgrading of the tool(s) is over due as well.