Isn't it "i18n"? We put all the translations in a spreadsheet, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FoYdyEraEQuWofzbYCDP... . We didn't like the idea of storing in any more complex than a csv file. All changes are shown to us in a diff before we merge, the csv is then downloaded and the i18n files created automatically after we merge the branch. We've never had a single instance of abuse in over 10 years.
Internationalization (i18n). Localization (l10n). Globalization (g11n). Localizability (l12y). Mozilla has a good article explaining the distinction: https://blog.mozilla.org/l10n/2011/12/14/i18n-vs-l10n-whats-...
I was once informed by someone at a big tech that the reason for these "x[n]y" codes is because these words can be hard to spell for non-native speakers of English. Also, they added "a11y" (accessibility) to the list.
I think the real explanation was that these were introduced because "internationalization" is a long word and file path names used to be limited in the 1980s.