Open-source plugins for an international audience: nl-NL + de-DE docs across the Shopware suite

The assumption that usually does not hold

Open-source plugins are almost always documented in English. For a global audience that is the right choice. For the Shopware ecosystem it is less obvious. The Shopware market is overwhelmingly German-speaking: Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland together make up the largest sales region. English-only READMEs put an unnecessary barrier in front of an agency lead in Munich during evaluation — often at the exact moment they decide whether to continue at all.

What the Shopware Plugin Suite recently gained

For all seven plugin families in the suite — Legal Pages, Newsletter, Product Encyclopedia, Multi-Brand, Seasons, Maintenance and Analytics — the user- and developer-facing documents were translated into nl-NL and de-DE. That covers:

• README.md — install and usage instructions.
• GDPR.md — privacy and compliance considerations.
• SECURITY.md — vulnerability policy and disclosure path.
• ACCESSIBILITY.md — WCAG status and supported accessibility features.
• WHY.md — rationale: why this plugin exists.
• COMPARISON.md — how the plugin compares to alternatives.

Three versions per document: a canonical English one, an nl-NL variant and a de-DE variant. The translation is not an MT dump but an editorial pass — German store-developer conventions deviate from English in a few specific places.

The locale switcher as a top bar

Three versions of a README only work if the visitor can find them easily. Each document now carries a locale switcher at the top: a short EN | NL | DE row with direct links to the other languages. That looks trivial but requires discipline — every textual change must flow through all three versions, and the switcher must keep pointing at all existing locales. The latter discipline is built into the PR template of every plugin.

Why this is more than a gesture

A German mid-size agency considering whether to trust a free open-source plugin for client work usually reads three documents before the install button is clicked: the README, GDPR.md and COMPARISON.md. When all three are available in German, the plugin sits in the same category as commercial German alternatives. When they are only in English, the evaluator reads two paragraphs less and bounces faster. The ROI of translation is therefore not "extra channel" but the removal of a trust barrier that would otherwise only surface during installation itself — if it is reached at all.

Maintained, not translated once

A translation is cheap to start and expensive to maintain. The pattern followed across the Shopware Plugin Suite is that every nl-NL or de-DE version is a direct derivative of the English original: not independent texts with their own rhythm, but consistent translations where each release brings sensible updates. The multi-locale doc PRs now merged across all seven plugin families set the baseline. Future releases add sections to it — not in one language, but in all three at once.