Developer English guide
Coding Terms in English: The Developer's Spanish-to-English Glossary
If you learned to code in Spanish, these are the terms you encounter every day at work in English teams. Here is what they mean and how to use them.
Software development is done mostly in English: the documentation, the pull requests, the Slack messages, the commit history. Even if your team is Spanish-speaking, the tools and workflows are English-first.
This glossary covers the 20 terms that come up most often in day-to-day developer work. For each one: the English term, the Spanish meaning, and a realistic usage example.
Code and version control
PR (Pull Request)
In Spanish: Solicitud de revisión de código
Example
"I opened a PR for the login refactor. Can you take a look?"
WIP (Work in Progress)
In Spanish: Trabajo en curso
Example
"This PR is still WIP — do not merge yet."
LGTM (Looks Good To Me)
In Spanish: Me parece bien / Aprobado
Example
"LGTM. Nice work on the error handling."
Branch
In Spanish: Rama de código en el repositorio
Example
"Create a new branch from main and open a PR when you are ready."
Merge
In Spanish: Integrar código de una rama en otra
Example
"The PR was approved. You can merge it now."
Rebase
In Spanish: Reescribir el historial de commits sobre otra rama
Example
"Please rebase your branch on main before merging."
Fork
In Spanish: Copia de un repositorio para trabajar de forma independiente
Example
"I forked the open source project to add Spanish language support."
Commit
In Spanish: Guardar cambios en el repositorio con un mensaje
Example
"I made three commits today: refactor, fix, and update tests."
Issue
In Spanish: Tarea, bug o solicitud de mejora en el repositorio
Example
"There is an open issue for this bug. I will link my PR to it."
Bug
In Spanish: Error en el código
Example
"There is a bug in the checkout flow — it is not validating the email field."
Infrastructure and deployment
Deploy
In Spanish: Desplegar / Publicar en producción
Example
"We are going to deploy to production at 3pm. Make sure your branch is merged."
Staging
In Spanish: Entorno de pruebas previo a producción
Example
"The feature is working on staging. Let's test it there before going live."
Hotfix
In Spanish: Corrección urgente en producción
Example
"We need a hotfix — the payment flow is broken for users on iOS."
Release
In Spanish: Versión publicada del software
Example
"We are cutting the next release at the end of the sprint."
CI/CD
In Spanish: Integración y despliegue continuos (automatización)
Example
"The CI/CD pipeline runs all tests on every PR before it can be merged."
On call
In Spanish: De guardia / disponible para incidentes
Example
"I am on call this week. I have to keep my phone nearby."
Agile and teamwork
Standup
In Spanish: Reunión diaria de sincronización
Example
"We do our standup at 10am every day. It only takes 15 minutes."
Sprint
In Spanish: Período de trabajo en metodología ágil (normalmente 2 semanas)
Example
"We have three stories left in this sprint. Can we finish them by Friday?"
Backlog
In Spanish: Lista de tareas pendientes por priorizar
Example
"That feature is in the backlog. We will get to it next quarter."
Scope creep
In Spanish: Aumento gradual e imprevisto del alcance de un proyecto
Example
"We started with one feature and now have five. Classic scope creep."
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Written by
Roxana LafuenteLingua-e's founder
Roxana Lafuente is a software engineer with 8+ years of experience. At the beginning of her career, even though she had already passed the First Certificate in English, she still froze every time she had to speak up in the daily standup. That was a gap nobody was fixing. After 2,000+ standups, she figured out what actually builds fluency: practice that looks like your real work. She built Lingua-e so other developers wouldn't have to take the long road to feel confident working in an international development environment.