92 lines
7.0 KiB
Markdown
92 lines
7.0 KiB
Markdown
# Localization parity
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> **Last reviewed:** 2026-10-10 · **Last updated:** 2026-10-11 · **Change:** minor (Ukrainian panel catalog recounted after it caught up with the Chinese ones) · **Target:** Adobe After Effects 2026
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How much of EffectCraft's interface is translated, language by language, compared with After
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Effects. [gaps.md](gaps.md) gap 16 and workstream G9 hold the work;
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[target-app-parity.md](target-app-parity.md) the overall numbers.
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## What After Effects ships
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The installed After Effects 2026 (26.5.0.89) bundle has 11 `.lproj` localisations: English,
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French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Simplified
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Chinese (`zh_CN`) and Traditional Chinese (`zh_TW`). Each translates the whole interface,
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including effect names and parameters. It ships no Hindi, Arabic, Indonesian or Vietnamese
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interface; Arabic and Hebrew text *in layers* is supported through its Middle Eastern text engine.
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## How EffectCraft translates
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- **Menus:** `crates/ui-egui/src/i18n.rs`, one catalog per language keyed by
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`(command, English label)`. A test (`every_translation_key_exists_in_the_actual_menu_tree`)
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fails if any fixed menu entry is untranslated or a row is stale, so every catalog covers all
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**618** fixed entries. The generated Effect menu (effect names) is deliberately left in English.
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- **Panels, dialogs, buttons, tooltips:** `crates/ui-egui/src/i18n/ui.rs`, keyed by the English
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source string, with English fallback. Catalogs exist for Japanese, Simplified and Traditional
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Chinese, Ukrainian and Czech.
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- **Not translated anywhere yet:** effect names and their ≈ 1,650 parameter names
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(`crates/effects`), engine-generated text (property names, errors, undo labels), the Home
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screen's unwrapped literals (#574), Learn tutorials and documentation.
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- **Language choice:** Settings ▸ General ▸ Language, or Match System
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(`match_system_uses_the_system_language_where_there_is_a_catalog`).
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- **Fonts:** no bundled CJK font; the UI installs system fallbacks probed by script (Kana, Han,
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Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam,
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Thai: `crates/ui-egui/src/theme.rs`). There is no Hangul probe, so Korean renders as boxes on
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macOS (#599). The web build has no system fonts.
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- **Script support in the interface:** egui draws text without complex shaping or right-to-left
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layout, so an Arabic or Hindi interface would render unshaped and left to right. **In text
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layers** (`crates/text`) shaping (harfrust), bidi (UAX #9), vertical text and Tate-Chu-Yoko
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work; text-layer typing goes through the IME (`viewer_text.rs` handles preedit and commit).
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## Measurement
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Measured 10 October 2026 at `origin/main` 1446e27 by counting catalog rows. The denominator,
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**≈ 3,900 user-visible strings**, is estimated: 618 fixed menu entries + ≈ 1,320 capitalised UI
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literals in `crates/ui-egui/src` outside tests and catalogs (a regex count, so an upper bound) +
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≈ 1,650 distinct effect parameter names + 306 effect names. Engine messages are not counted, so
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the true percentages are slightly lower.
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| Language | Code | UI strings translated | Dialogs / tooltips / help | Script support | Native review | Status | To `full` |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| English | `en` | ≈ 3,900 (100%, source) | All; docs in English | — | yes | full | — |
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| Simplified Chinese | `zh-hans` | 1,081 (≈ 28%): menus 618/618, panels 463 | Panels and dialogs partly (≈ 35% of panel strings); no help, effects untranslated; Home screen literals unwrapped (#574) | System CJK fallback; Han follows the UI language; CJK text in comps renders wrongly (#453); IME in text layers | no | partial | 6–9 h + review |
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| Spanish | `es` | 618 (≈ 16%) | Menus only | Latin, fine | no | menus only | 7–10 h + review |
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| Hindi | `hi` | 0 | — | UI: Devanagari fallback font but no shaping; text layers shape Devanagari | no | none (After Effects: none) | 9–13 h + shaping in the UI |
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| Arabic | `ar` | 0 | — | UI: Arabic fallback font but no shaping and no RTL layout; text layers: bidi + shaping | no | none (After Effects: none) | 9–13 h + 15–25 h RTL UI |
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| French | `fr` | 0 | — | Latin, fine | no | none | 8–12 h + review |
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| Portuguese (Brazil) | `pt-br` | 618 (≈ 16%) | Menus only | Latin, fine | no | menus only | 7–10 h + review |
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| Indonesian | `id` | 0 | — | Latin, fine | no | none (After Effects: none) | 8–12 h + review |
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| Japanese | `ja` | 1,015 (≈ 26%): menus 618/618, panels 397 | Panels and dialogs partly (≈ 30% of panel strings) | Japanese system fallback; vertical text and Tate-Chu-Yoko in text layers; IME | no | partial | 6–9 h + review |
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| German | `de` | 0 | — | Latin, fine | no | none | 8–12 h + review |
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| Korean | `ko` | 0 | — | No Hangul fallback probe: boxes on macOS (#599) | no | none | 9–13 h + review |
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| Vietnamese | `vi` | 0 | — | Latin with stacked diacritics; untested | no | none (After Effects: none) | 8–12 h + review |
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Other languages EffectCraft ships (3):
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| Language | Code | UI strings translated | Status | To `full` |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Traditional Chinese | `zh-hant` | 1,081 (≈ 28%): menus 618/618, panels 463 | partial | 6–9 h + review |
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| Ukrainian | `uk` | 1,113 (≈ 29%): menus 618/618, panels 495/496 | partial | 6–9 h + review |
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| Czech | `cs` | 1,114 catalog entries (≈ 29%): menus 618/618, panels 496/496 (current Chinese catalog); added after the measurement above | All existing catalog entries covered; unwrapped UI, effects and engine text still in English; AI-assisted, not yet native-speaker proofread | Remaining strings + independent native review |
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After Effects also ships Italian and Russian, which EffectCraft does not (8–12 h each).
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**Overall: ≈ 12%**, the average coverage of After Effects' 10 non-English languages
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(Simplified and Traditional Chinese 28%, Japanese 26%, Spanish and Portuguese 16%, French,
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German, Korean, Italian and Russian 0%). This is the localization row in
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[target-app-parity.md](target-app-parity.md#by-dimension).
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**Effort.** One-time work first: route effect names, parameter names and engine messages through
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a catalog, wrap the remaining panel literals, and add a Hangul probe (10–20 h). Then each language
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needs ≈ 2,900 more strings (≈ 5–9 h per language at the pace of #398 and #401). Parity with After
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Effects' 10 non-English languages: **≈ 60–110 h**; the four extra languages of the standard list
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(Hindi, Arabic, Indonesian, Vietnamese) add ≈ 50–80 h, most of it right-to-left layout and
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complex shaping in the interface. Every language needs native-speaker review, which only a human
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can give; none has had it.
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## Revision history
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| Date | Change | Summary |
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| 2026-10-10 | major | First localization parity document: catalog rows counted for all six languages, the twelve-language table, After Effects' 11 shipped languages from its bundle |
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| 2026-10-11 | minor | Ukrainian panel catalog brought level with the Chinese ones (495 of 496 rows, counted at this commit); its share rises to ≈ 29%. The other languages' panel counts are the 10 October measurement |
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