Languages

The Babel Desktop interface is available in English, Italian, French, German, Spanish and Japanese, and more languages can be added with language packages.

Changing the Language

Open the Appearance settings

Open Settings (Ctrl+, on Windows and Linux, Cmd+, on macOS) and choose Appearance.

Choose the interface language

Select the language in Interface language. The interface is available in English, Italian, French, German, Spanish and Japanese.

Keep working

The change takes effect right away, with no restart. Open views, form values, unsaved project changes and running jobs are kept.

Settings dialog after switching the Interface language to Italiano: the whole interface is localized, with Impostazioni, Aspetto and Tema Chiaro — The interface in Italian

Only the interface is translated. Engine option names, engine log messages, source code and the records in your licensing database stay as they are.

Language Packages

To add another language, install a language package: a single UTF-8 JSON file, no larger than 2 MB, that maps each English interface text to its translation.

Write the package

fr.json


{
  "schemaVersion": 1,
  "locale": "fr",
  "name": "Français",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "strings": {
    "Save": "Enregistrer",
    "Open {p0}": "Ouvrir {p0}"
  },
  "sha256": "<SHA-256 of JSON.stringify(strings)>"
}

Follow the package rules

locale is a BCP 47 language tag and version a three-part version.
Every placeholder of the English text, such as {p0}, must be kept in the translation.
sha256 is the hexadecimal SHA-256 hash of the strings object serialized with JSON.stringify, used to detect a corrupted file. In Node.js: createHash('sha256').update(JSON.stringify(pkg.strings)).digest('hex').

Install the package

Choose Settings > Appearance > Install language package… and select the file.

Texts a package does not translate appear in English, and entries for texts the application no longer uses are ignored. A package therefore keeps working after application updates. Settings > Appearance shows how many texts of the current version a package covers. A package cannot replace English, run scripts or download resources.

Extension Translations

Extensions can carry their own translations. A .babelext package can include locales/<language>.json files for the texts in its manifest and translated README.<locale>.md descriptions. Babel Desktop uses them when the interface is set to that language.