Foundations

Internationalisation

Roadmap

TpGroup brands operate across multiple languages and scripts. The design system provides rules for string externalisation, locale-aware formatting, RTL support, pluralisation, and typography fall-back, so the same React Native codebase renders correctly in every locale on every platform.

Locales in scope

Locale	Script	Notes
en-SL / en-GB / en-US	Latin	Primary. En-SL (Sierra Leone English) is the editorial default.
fr-FR / fr-SN	Latin	Francophone West Africa — TpGroup diaspora audiences.
pt-PT / pt-BR	Latin	Lusophone communities.
ar	Arabic	RTL. Required for regional partner programs.
krio	Latin	Spoken lingua franca of Sierra Leone — appears in FambulTik heritage content.

Live formatting

Locale	Date & time	Number	Currency
English (Sierra Leone) en-SL	18 April 2026 at 2:32 pm	1,234,567.89	Le 1,850.75
Français (France) fr-FR	18 avril 2026 à 14:32	1 234 567,89	1 850,75 €
Português (Portugal) pt-PT	18 de abril de 2026 às 14:32	1 234 567,89	1850,75 €
العربية ar	18 أبريل 2026 في 2:32 م	1,234,567.89	‏1,850.75 ر.س.‏

Right-to-left

Layouts use logical properties (start/end) rather than left/right. In React Native this means paddingStart/paddingEnd; in CSS this means logical properties (margin-inline-start, etc.). Icons with directional meaning (back, forward, next, previous) flip in RTL; directional icons tied to physical reality (play, pause, media controls) do not.

Flip this card to RTL (dir="rtl")

Aisha Hassan

Product Manager

Padding, icon position, and the follow button reorder automatically because the card uses logical start/end properties rather than left/right.

Pseudo-localization

Before translations arrive, UI copy is tested with pseudo-localization to surface hard-coded strings, catch truncation, and validate the 30% growth rule over English. A combining acute (U+0301) is appended to every letter and the string is padded with tildes to simulate the expected growth.

Enable pseudo-localization

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Pseudo-strings are ~30% longer than English. If any row overflows its container, the UI needs work before translations arrive.

Formatting rules

Concern	Approach
Dates & times	Intl.DateTimeFormat / native Calendar on each platform; never format manually.
Numbers	Intl.NumberFormat with currency and locale-aware grouping/decimal separators.
Currencies	ISO 4217 codes; currency display uses symbol or code per locale.
Pluralisation	ICU MessageFormat; no string concatenation for pluralised strings.
Text truncation	Allow for 30 percent growth over English baseline in UI copy.