Great post. I wonder whether the admin interfaces for translating, inline translating in particular, are custom made or at least based on some open source libraries?

Never thought of doing huge website translations like this before, excellent post!

Great story, and some useful insights on the logistics of translation...but a couple of questions were raised for me:

1. How long does it usually take to launch a foreign language branch of Airbnb? Is the actual language (and its characteristics) the primary factor in the technical work involved?

2. I take it that the Japanese localized site was aimed at Japanese wanting to travel overseas...but Airbnb (US) was already handling foreigners-to-Japanese translations, right? What was the amount of Japanese text that had to be translated to English?