Ok, so I know it was against your advice anyway, but I located the language files in public and did want to edit a couple of the messages in the short-term, but there is a README file there saying dont!
# The files here are not meant to be edited directly
Please see the → [Internalization README](../README.md)
# Important note about localising NodeBB
The files here are read-only and overwritten daily (if there are changes) by the helper bot [Misty](https://github.com/nodebb-misty).
Our localisation efforts are handled via [our Transifex Project](https://explore.transifex.com/nodebb/nodebb/),
and any pull requests made to this directory will be automatically closed because
localisations can go out-of-sync when edited directly.
If there are non-localised strings and you cannot find them in Transifex, please
[open a new issue on our bug tracker]
This leads me to another question. How can something externally be ‘updating files daily’ on my server without my permission (if Im understanding that correctly?)