Now that a first release of Haiku is not behind the horizon anymore (next Christmas I heard), I wondered if the time is ripe for localizing Haiku?
Localisation will be a big feature in R2. Very probably not a part of the first release. The locale kit does sit in OpenTracker, so potentially could be developed before R1, but I think that’s unlikely.
IMO it would be better for R1 to be able to be localized. 
It’s important to get Haiku in to the most hands possible early on.
It would also be better for R1 to have full SVG icon support, a nice OpenGL accelerated app_server, a fully font-sensitive scalable UI, etc, etc. Then we end up talking about R2+ and we are in the usual scary area of open source - many projects fail to ever reach a release.
I’ve talked about what should go in R1 with Michael a few years ago, and he believes the most important thing is to get a working system out as quickly as possible. In Axel’s partyzip presentation he describes it as “the best R5 ever released”, which sums it up nicely.
I suggested to Michael it might be more accurate to refer to it as R0.5 - it’s not going to be a release to give to your grandmother, but more something to build on, something to excite people before R2 brings with it some of the features we all really want.