That wouldn't be called a "monorepo" then :D

Obviously, the problems they are solving (and admitting to solving) are due to their dedication to the monorepo.

With all the effort spent on working around the drawbacks, I really wonder what advantages they are seeing that make it worth their while?

Well, there is monorepo and monorepo. Git was primarily made to host code, not necessary artifacts. I would categorize those files as artifacts and in my opinion it would still be a code monorepo to have everything else on a single repo.

They are code files managed by a different set of people (translators), not generated artifacts (as they explain elsewhere in this discussion).

If we are being pedantic, git was not designed to host multiple projects in a single repo (otherwise, git would have been a subdirectory in the kernel tree). But tools are made without knowing how they'll be used, and that's ok, so I wouldn't stress on what the purpose for monorepo was, but how it's used and what value it brings.

>They are code files managed by a different set of people (translators), not generated artifacts (as they explain elsewhere in this discussion

Translations do not look like code to me. Rather human generated artifacts.

What I understand is there is a strong tie/match needed between versions of these translations files and the code itself, so I believe this is where having all in the same repo would make sense, having the translators update those file when code has been modified...

I think it's relatively normal to include build artifacts in a monorepo when you don't want users to have to be able to build every single one. Especially if you don't want to have to buy a license for every developer for specialist software that only needs to be used by a few people.

Given the religious nature of the "monorepo" vs. "not-monorepo" argument, I would venture a guess that suggesting storing these xlf files elsewhere would upset someone's notion of what a "monorepo" Should Properly Be.

Having them under version control seems very important. Monorepo makes that easy