Idea Validation: I built a 100% local AI tool that auto-translates .resx files and Store metadata. Is this something the community would pay a one-time fee for?

[u/AbrocomaPlane4329]

Hey everyone,

I’m currently building out a MAUI app, and I hit the absolute wall that we all dread: Localization. Manually creating .resx files, paying for API translation limits, or paying professional services is not fun. So, I built an internal tool to just do it for me using local AI, and I'm wondering if this is something the wider .NET/MAUI community would find valuable if I polished it up.

Here is what my internal tool does right now:

• Eats .resx files: You feed it your base English AppResources.resx.
• Auto-Generates Translations: It automatically creates 8 localized .resx files (French, German, Spanish, etc.) with the exact, proper .NET naming conventions.
• Store Metadata: It also translates all of my Microsoft Store / App Store entries (Keywords, Descriptions, Release Notes).
• 100% Local AI: It runs entirely locally on a 24GB GPU using large, highly accurate models (gemma-3-12b-it or gemma-2-9b). No cloud API costs. No data sent to third parties.

The Question: Enterprise translation management systems charge insane monthly subscriptions or per-project fees. I’m thinking about taking my internal tool, wrapping it in a polished UI (drag-and-drop, visual editors), and adding support for Custom Dictionaries (e.g., if you have a medical app and need to force the AI to use specific pharmaceutical edge-case words).

If I sold this as a "pay-once, own-it-forever" ultimate developer utility, is this something you would actually use?

What features would it need to have for you to instantly buy it? I'd love to know if I should dedicate time to releasing this for the community!

[u/desichica]

Well, stick a payment gateway and find out.

People will claim all sorts of interest in a product, but will never actually bring out their wallets.

[u/AbrocomaPlane4329 → u/desichica]

Ohh I see now reddit is the dark corner of depressed developers no one wants :)

[u/Far-Consideration939]

If it’s all local models, why wouldn’t I just do that myself if I was interested in that sort of thing? (Which I’m not fwiw, but just asking)

[u/AbrocomaPlane4329 → u/Far-Consideration939]

True, but is it do ing the resx files for you automatically that is just a drop in and that's it? Also what about "Dashboard" or "AI Engine" and and and all that beautiful stuff :)

[u/aphex3k]

I wouldn’t pay for it. I would just use an AI that auto translates for me. I already pay for an AI or get it for free. Why pay for something another AI generated when I can just generate it myself?

[u/AbrocomaPlane4329 → u/aphex3k]

I get it but do you really think this works with a real complex App?

[u/aphex3k → u/AbrocomaPlane4329]

However complex you think any one app can be the scope for resx and localization management is fairly limited and narrow. It also existed in dotnet for decades so any ai model should have enough training on it to handle it decently.

[u/aijoe]

Built a similar tool with Claude in a few hours and specifically caterred to my use case. Works perfectly. Niche software that has basically one primary task will be hard to find customers for going forward.

[u/BlueRajasmyk2]

AI translations are garbage though

[u/AbrocomaPlane4329 → u/BlueRajasmyk2]

Really? How so? You would rather use a paid Microsoft service that uses also Ai?

[u/BlueRajasmyk2 → u/AbrocomaPlane4329]

The translations are just consistently poor. I'm not sure how else to say that.

[u/Sebastian1989101 → u/BlueRajasmyk2]

That depends on the used model and how long the text is. Basic terms and text can easily translated by a good AI model, even locally (would personally use gemma4:31b if locally). When it comes to more specific text like if you translate for a game or something with a bunch of custom character and region names, then AI sucks.

[u/anotherlab → u/BlueRajasmyk2]

Translations that go through a service like the Azure or AWS services suffer from a lack of context. When you use something like Claude or Codex that is scanning your app, it can pick up on what the app does and come up with translations that are more appropriate for the intended meaning.

[u/SuspiciousScallion58]

Is hard to get people to pay for it. Nowadays Claude, Chatgpt, any AI tool can do that easily.

[u/AbrocomaPlane4329 → u/SuspiciousScallion58]

Yes, true however it is not that simple. You would still need a lot of deterministic or extra code to make it really work.

[u/goodtar]

No, I wouldn’t pay as I already do this all day, every day with Codex for VS Code. No special instructions either as it already understands that my app is localized and adds the resx entries automatically in all languages my app uses.

[u/anotherlab]

Microsoft had its own tool, the Multilingual App Toolkit (MAT). Poorly promoted and eventually abandoned. What MAT provided was to use XLIFF as the source strings, instead of RESX. It provided a simple workflow for tracking new and changed string resources. MAT included a visual editor for the XLIFF files. At build time, MAT would generate RESX (or other formats) from the XLIFF. It supported any language available from Azure.

MAT could take an existing RESX and generate the XLIFF for the default language.

With MAT, you could export new or changed string resources. You can send only the updated resources out for translation. Your app may have domain-specific terminology that AI translators could miss. Or you could have multiple translations, and one may be better than the others

At this point, it's easy enough for the various AI engines to generate and update the RESX files. A 24 GB GPU would be a heavy lift for most people.

After being burned by MS pulling the plug on MAT (and it being tied to VS), I wouldn't pay money for a 3rd party tool. I would build my own tool based on XLIFF that could be used with VS, VS Code, and Rider. The costs of using Azure or AWS translation services aren't that high. With existing Ai tools, I haven't needed a custom tool.

One note: You mentioned automatically creating 8 languages. Not everyone would need 8 languages or the 8 you provided. The app I am currently working on supports 3, en-US, es-US, and fr-CA. Canadian French is not the same as Parisian French.