Brand Voices#

A brand voice defines how your product speaks in a specific language — tone, formality, and style rules that the localization engine applies to every translation for that locale.

How it works#

Each brand voice is tied to a single target locale within a localization engine. When the engine processes a translation request for that locale, it includes the brand voice text as context for the LLM — shaping word choice, sentence structure, and register.

Defining a brand voice#

Brand voice text is free-form natural language. Write it as if briefing a translator who has never worked with your product.

Effective brand voices include:

• Formality level — formal "Sie" vs. informal "du" in German, "vous" vs. "tu" in French
• Tone — professional, conversational, playful, technical
• Audience — developers, enterprise buyers, consumers, internal teams
• Conventions — how to handle numbers, dates, currency, or product-specific terminology

Example#

For a German locale targeting a developer audience:

Use informal "du" address. Keep a direct, technical tone — similar
to how Stripe or Vercel write their German documentation. Prefer
short sentences. Use active voice. When a German equivalent exists
for a technical term, use it (e.g., "Bereitstellung" for deployment),
but keep widely-adopted English terms as-is (e.g., API, CLI, Token).

Using brand voices with the API#

Brand voices are applied automatically when you call the localize endpoint. The engine matches the targetLocale in the request to the configured brand voice and includes it in the LLM prompt.

No additional parameters are needed — if a brand voice exists for the target locale, it is used.

{
  "sourceLocale": "en",
  "targetLocale": "de",
  "data": {
    "greeting": "Hey there! Ready to ship?",
    "cta": "Get started"
  }
}

With the German brand voice above, the engine produces informal, technically-oriented translations rather than generic formal output.

Managing brand voices via MCP#

If you use the Lingo.dev MCP server, your AI coding assistant can create and update brand voices directly from the conversation:

"Set the German brand voice to use informal du, technical tone,
short sentences, active voice."

The MCP server writes the brand voice to your localization engine without leaving the development environment.

Next Steps#