When trying to use the plugin I see "Request approval or "Approval pending." Do I need permission to use the plugin?
If you use an organization or enterprise Figma plan, organization admins can restrict access to third-party plugins, requiring approval before they can be used. When enabled, members can only use plugins and widgets that have been approved by an organization admin. Users must click "Request approval" to seek permission from their organization admin. Ensure the Smartling plugin is approved by an admin on your Figma account in order to use the plugin.
What Smartling user role is needed to submit content for the Figma plugin?
Users must be an Account Owner, Project Manager, or Requester to submit content for translation.
Is it possible to change the way translated files are named?
No, currently it is not possible to change the naming conventions for translated files. Each time you apply translations, a new page is created under Figma Pages for each language. The target locale is appended to the end of the file name to indicate a translated page, e.g., Dashboard Login [German (Germany)].
I added a language to a job from the Smartling dashboard, but I cannot automatically apply the translations. Why is this?
If a language is added from the Smartling dashboard, the plugin won’t be aware of the new language, so when you attempt to apply translations, the plugin won’t be able to do so. In this case, translations would need to be manually imported into Figma. To avoid this issue, if you need to add a new language to a job, it should be requested through the plugin.
Does the Figma plugin store any of my data?
The Figma plugin does not store any customer data, only Smartling related data. It does not collect any data on the client side, it uses Smartling's REST API to store/read data related to translation from the Smartling side.
When I apply translations using the Figma plugin, some of the translated strings—particularly for languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean aren’t visible. Why is this?
This issue is often related to a known bug in Figma that affects the performance of the Smartling plugin, particularly with CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) characters. Our team has reported the bug to Figma support, and you can view more details about it here.
As a workaround, we recommend using the "Regenerate All Instances (slow)" command from the quick actions panel, which can help display the missing characters.
Why are some translations not being applied to the Figma file?
This can happen if linguists remove or misplace tags in the translations. It can also occur if the job was requested with the "Remove all formatting before submission option" enabled. This setting strips any HTML markup from the submitted file, so linguists only see the text for translation. As a result, the markup is also removed from the translated version, which may cause the translations to not display properly when applied.