First, I want to commend the Figma team for the incredible work you’re doing in continuously evolving the variable scope. We’ve begun using string variables in our designs to capitalize on the benefits of maintaining a single source of truth, ensuring our designs remain up-to-date.
Here’s our vision:
Currently, we’ve developed an in-house plugin that interfaces with Figma string variables to generate an XLS file containing a list of keys and values for our localization team to translate. However, this process isn’t fully automated yet—we still need to manually generate the XLS document from the Plugin, download it, and upload it to the backend.
We utilize the variable folder structure to create keys and identify the context of the text. The plugin then adds the platform-specific prefix to each key before generating the XLS file. So far, this system is working well!
Looking ahead, our roadmap includes developing a fully automated system where Figma variables serve as the source of truth for our strings. In this future setup, designers will collaborate with the content team to create and manage text, which will then be sent directly for translation—eliminating the need to export XLS files.
Our goal is to update our translated string database directly from Figma whenever a string variable is added, modified, or deleted.
I’m curious to know if the Figma team has plans to consider the following features in the near future:
• The ability to add small text decorations using markdown in string variable values (e.g., bold, italic).
• The ability to add notes for each key/value pair to provide context and descriptions for each text.
• Provide a way to parameterize the strings and insert arguments ( wide topic to be discussed )
Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to seeing more exciting developments from this fantastic feature!
Cheers!