I know very well that not everyone speaks English.
In real-world projects, a small number of people are admins, and they usually have good enough English for the role.
I hope one day Tiki will be fully translated to many many languages. For now, we go step by step and this initiative will help translators prioritize according to their context.
"In real-world projects, a small number of people are admins, and they usually have good enough English for the role. "
My experience is contrary to that. English is only spoken by a fraction of the population. And I'm talking of Germany, where English skills might be more common than in French, Spanish and other dominated countries...
Even among my colleagues (and I work in the engineering of a large IT operation in Germany...) most people are NOT fluent in English...
Microsoft even translated the CODE words of Visual Basic to all target languages, thus rendering all VB scripts non-portable, so obviously MS thinks otherwise.
"We usually want to prioritize what is visible to end users and leave the admin panel in English."
My advice is: DO NOT assume everyone is capable of English. Most people on the planet aren't. If you want Tiki do be used by non-English speaking people, you have to localize the entire interface.