I have some spicy takes today, as someone who did hobbyist translations of English songs to Mandarin for a long while.

Constructed languages have no space in localisations, most of the time.
This doesn’t include translation as an art form–yes, absolutely translate things to Toki Pona or Esperanto–translation is, however, a very complicated topic that cover very complicated and nuanced topics such as “artistic intentions,” “utilitarian values,” and “multilingualism,” and more. What you have to keep in mind is that I’m going to only talk about a specific subset of this topic, being “official translations of forms of arts, and official translations of documents”

You should never celebrate when an official translation is included for a conlang, because most of the time, the proposal that caused the decision is the apparent utilitarian value of including a translation in a conlang, which is

• Not a virtue of translation and localisation that anyone should celebrate
• Not applicable to conlangs

There’s a reason my examples are the two languages touted as “international languages.”
International languages is an utilitarian pipedream. There is no usefulness to a language constructed to be “international” or “universal,” because as every other facet of translation and localisation would tell you, there is no such thing as an Universal or Neutral language. Every language is biased by everything surrounding that language and anyone who throws a shiny mix of different European languages with many sounds that often only exist in European languages and no sounds that don’t, is selling you snake oil.

In fact, the moment you consider translations for its utilitarian values for any forms of art–you’ve already lost the entire point. Hollow Knight, and its sequel, Hollow Knight: Silk Song, both launched with horrific Mandarin translations. Silk Song had the privilege that the sequel had a very large Mandarin-speaking fanbase at launch and very immediate community feedback, and the developers bit the bullet and let the community translators fix up the game for them. This was never fixed for the first game, but the first game was just as badly translated.

This is the result of the idea that, a Mandarin translation simply translates to “capturing” the Mandarin speaking market. It is a utilitarian value decision, and the translation was outsourced to the lowest bidder. This is why it is impossible to have a sustainable job as a translator in the first place. Our work is not valued because our work is considered utilitarian, our work is considered factory labour and our work is to be replaced by machines the moment they’re capable.

Then you might ask: what about documents? They’re supposed to give information only, they have no artistic intentionality to speak of.

… My question for you is: translations for whom?
Is it for the people from developing countries whose languages simply are not regarded at all on the international stage? No! Because said international languages are also just as hard to learn as any other European languages. These “international languages” are just a blend of different European languages, and sometimes borrowing words from non-European languages. And I say this as a native mandarin speaker who learned English as a second language, well beyond the age of natural language acquisition. These languages are just as inaccessible as any other European languages to me, if not more simply because they often make use of sounds that are incredibly hard for me to pronounce.

Is it then for the same Europeans who just don’t speak the lengua franca?
No! I have never seen a document translated to one of these international languages, that don’t also already have translations for all the big European languages!

Who is it for then? Who is it for.
I ask that all the time and I realise that it is for people who think that languages are a kind of utility to be automated and maximised, who take The Tower of Babel way too literally.