Monthly localization engineering tasks for docs site (2026-01)

**[Template copied over from **https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/localization/docs-site-localization/-/blob/main/.gitlab/issue_templates/monthly-maintenance-tasks.md?ref_type=heads****\****\****\]

Monthly Localization Cleanup Tasks

Every month, after the technical writing team runs their cleanup in /doc, the localization team should follow up with these tasks to keep /doc-locale in sync.

These tasks ensure translation repos stay aligned with source content and prevent build failures.

Setup

First, ensure you have:

  • All localization projects cloned locally
  • The latest changes from /doc main branch
  • Access to run the docs-i18n-lint pipeline

Expired Redirects

After the TW team removes redirects from /doc, we need to mirror these deletions in /doc-locale.

Check the docs-i18n-lint job for failures - these indicate files that exist in /doc-locale but not in /doc.

Usage:

# Review the failed paths from docs-i18n-lint
# Remove corresponding files from each locale directory
rm /doc-locale/ja-jp/path/to/deleted/file.md
rm /doc-locale/fr-fr/path/to/deleted/file.md
# etc for all locales

Redirects Component

The Redirects component contains a list of all the Redirects files. This allows the GitLab Localization team to distinguish those files in Argo when deciding which ones to translate in the Asset Dashboard. The list of Redirects changes, so this list of files must be updated routinely.

  1. Download the list_redirects.sh file from https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/localization/docs-site-localization/-/snippets/4896711
  2. Run the file, with the path to the locally cloned repo as the first argument
  3. The output at the end should say something like "Exported results to .../list_files.txt". Open that file.
    • In the event there are no Redirects found, you instead can use a fake path that should never match any file.
  4. Open the argo_translation.yml file for the specified repo in GitLab
  5. Copy the contents under = IGNORED PATHS = and replace the Technical Documentation component's ignored_paths under "Redirects"
  6. Copy the contents under = NEW PATHS FOR COMPONENT = and replace all the paths for the "Redirects" component
  7. Create an MR that merges the changes

Sync Validation

After cleanup, run these checks:

  1. Ensure docs hugo_build passes (confirms no broken redirects)
  2. Verify docs-i18n-lint passes (confirms sync with /doc)
  3. Check that English fallback is working for any missing translations
Edited by Rasam Hossain