Localization with pivot languages
A pivot language is an intermediate language that is used when a direct translation from the source language to the target language is not available.
You may need a pivot language when your translation vendor does not offer a direct translation from your source language or it is too costly to perform a direct translation. For example, you want to localize content into Arabic from Japanese, but your translation vendor does not offer Japanese to Arabic (or it is too expensive). However, they do offer Japanese to English and English to Arabic. You can use English as a pivot language, so you can create a sequence to localize Japanese into English and then English into Arabic.
Process for pivot language localization
When pivot language localization is enabled, the administrator configures which pivot languages can be localized into which target languages. Although an object can be localized in any available language, once an object has been localized from a pivot language, you cannot shortcut its localization sequence. For example, if you have localized a map and its child objects from Japanese to English to Arabic, you cannot update that map and its child objects from Japanese directly to Arabic.
When a source object is translated into a language for the first time, the system creates a new object in the target language (referred to as a language object). A language object has its own Revision number as well as an Authoring Revision property, which stores the revision number of the source object when it was sent for translation. With pivot language localization, the source object is not necessarily in the Authoring cycle. For example, if you have localized from Japanese to English to Arabic to Indonesian, the revision number stored as the Authoring Revision for the Indonesian language object comes from its source object (the Arabic language object), not the originally authored content (the Japanese object).