How I built a lightweight, effective translation system without Babel

Author: Asim · February 12, 2025

Overview

While building sparQ, I needed a translation system that was both simple to maintain and powerful enough to handle dynamic content. The popular choice would have been Flask-Babel, but I wanted something more lightweight and straightforward. Here’s how I implemented a custom translation system that’s both elegant and effective.

The Problem with Traditional Solutions

Flask-Babel is great, but it comes with overhead:

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Overview

Following my previous post about implementing Real-Time Updates Implementation in People Module, I’ve evolved the system into a full-fledged chat platform. The goal was to create a familiar, Slack-like interface that maintains simplicity while providing essential team communication features. This transformation wasn’t just about renaming - it involved rethinking how teams interact within our platform.

Why the Evolution?

While the previous updates system worked well for company announcements, I believe that teams need more dynamic communication options. I noticed that updates could beused for various purposes:

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Overview

As an old-school UNIX geek, I’ve built countless access control systems—ranging from simple to complex. Yet, I always come back to the elegance of the UNIX model. Inspired by its tried-and-true simplicity, I present here a clean, effective implementation of role-based views in sparQ using a familiar concept: groups. A group consists of multiple users, and a user can belong to multiple groups.

Built-in Groups:

• All: Every user is automatically a member.
• Admin: Users with administrative privileges.
• Custom groups (e.g., Sales, Engineering) can be created by admins.

The application implements group-based views through a layered approach combining decorators, route protection, seperate templates, and conditional template logic. This allows for a maintainable, flexible and secure way to manage access to different parts of the application. A normal user for instance can see another employees profile (contact info etc)but not sensitive personal information. An admin can see system wide settings but a normal user can only see their own settings.

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Overview

Today I implemented a new real-time updates system in the People module. The People module was initially designed to display company updates. Admittedly, company update posts are not like real-time notifications, so using a simple polling mechanism gets the job done but is not the best solution. To achieve a more elegant and efficient solution, I transitioned to a hybrid system that leverages WebSockets in combination with a custom Server-Side Events (SSE) mechanism. This way if the updates section is turned into a more general Slack type of system with channels for both announcements (static posts) and general discussions (real-time posts), the code is already in place.

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Building for Growth: Laying the Right Foundations

Designing a system that is expected to grow and scale over time requires careful architectural decisions from the start. At sparQ, we prioritize a modular and extensible approach that allows for flexibility, maintainability, and scalability. A well-structured foundation ensures that as sparQ evolves into a more powerful tool for small businesses, it remains simple, intuitive, and efficient.

To achieve this, sparQ is designed around the following key architectural principles:

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When I started spar, I asked myself the same question: does the world really need another HR and team management app? There are already some great products out there—BambooHR, Homebase, Zoho People, OrangeHRM, GoCo, and even payroll providers like Gusto and Paychex, which have started bundling basic team management features. But after years of building HR and ATS systems and running microbusinesses (companies with 1-10 employees), I saw a gap that no one was addressing: small businesses owners need a simple, all-in-one, modular system that truly works for them. A software that makes them use it less and get more done.

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This is the first post on this blog on Feb 6, 2025.

I’m not sure what I’ll write about yet.

I’m just going to write about whatever comes to mind.

Come and join our team by checking out the repo at github.com/sparqone/sparq.

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