In this paper we connect the well-established discrete frame theory of generalized shift invariant systems to a continuous frame theory. To do so, we let
Γ
j
\Gamma _{\!j}
,
j
∈
J
j \in J
, be a countable family of closed, co-compact subgroups of a second countable locally compact abelian group
G
G
and study systems of the form
⋃
j
∈
J
{
g
j
,
p
(
⋅
−
γ
)
}
γ
∈
Γ
j
,
p
∈
P
j
\bigcup _{j \in J}\{ g_{j,p}(\cdot - \gamma )\}_{\gamma \in \Gamma _{\!j}, p \in P_j}
with generators
g
j
,
p
g_{j,p}
in
L
2
(
G
)
L^2(G)
and with each
P
j
P_j
being a countable or an uncountable index set. We refer to systems of this form as generalized translation invariant (GTI) systems. Many of the familiar transforms, e.g., the wavelet, shearlet and Gabor transform, both their discrete and continuous variants, are GTI systems. Under a technical
α
\alpha
local integrability condition (
α
\alpha
-LIC) we characterize when GTI systems constitute tight and dual frames that yield reproducing formulas for
L
2
(
G
)
L^2(G)
. This generalizes results on generalized shift invariant systems, where each
P
j
P_j
is assumed to be countable and each
Γ
j
\Gamma _{\!j}
is a uniform lattice in
G
G
, to the case of uncountably many generators and (not necessarily discrete) closed, co-compact subgroups. Furthermore, even in the case of uniform lattices
Γ
j
\Gamma _{\! j}
, our characterizations improve known results since the class of GTI systems satisfying the
α
\alpha
-LIC is strictly larger than the class of GTI systems satisfying the previously used local integrability condition. As an application of our characterization results, we obtain new characterizations of translation invariant continuous frames and Gabor frames for
L
2
(
G
)
L^2(G)
. In addition, we will see that the admissibility conditions for the continuous and discrete wavelet and Gabor transform in
L
2
(
R
n
)
L^2(\mathbb {R}^n)
are special cases of the same general characterizing equations.