Localization - where are we going in v3.0?

[mikkelwf]

After the release of beta 108 (which included #7669), I've tested the state of translations in Payload 3, and I'm a bit unsure where the translations are going feature-wise.

According to the docs, translations are implemented strictly on field-level. This makes sense for some use-cases, but, I've struggled a bit to make certain things work properly.

Firstly, when querying documents, the locale property only translates - it does not filter.
Having all documents available in all languages is not always a viable solution, and I've found no intuitive way of querying documents base on locale (well this is kinda obvious because the documents themselves are not aware of their locale).

I was kinda hoping that the "publish in locale" feature would include an option to control the publication status for each language - but I having been able to find that feature. (also the _status field for a collection is not translated).

The option to control visibility (either by being able to translate the _status field, or by some other means), is kinda essential. You can obviously build this with custom fields, but since the locale concept is a first class citizen in both the admin interface and the querying engine, it could be nice to have this functionality build in.

a localize: true field on the document would make sense, and it would fit nicely into the current model. It would make it possible to filter the admin interface based on locale (or show translation status). The current data model would be kept, except for the _status field moving to the _locales table.

I know this conceptually mixes drafts and locale, but for normal page content for at CMS it makes sense.

Has something like this been discussed / considered?