8.6 KiB
Localization parity
Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-13 · Change: minor (effect names and the generated Effect menu go through a catalog, in Simplified Chinese) · Target: Adobe After Effects 2026
How much of EffectCraft's interface is translated, language by language, compared with After Effects. gaps.md gap 16 and workstream G9 hold the work; target-app-parity.md the overall numbers.
What After Effects ships
The installed After Effects 2026 (26.5.0.89) bundle has 11 .lproj localisations: English,
French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Simplified
Chinese (zh_CN) and Traditional Chinese (zh_TW). Each translates the whole interface,
including effect names and parameters. It ships no Hindi, Arabic, Indonesian or Vietnamese
interface; Arabic and Hebrew text in layers is supported through its Middle Eastern text engine.
How EffectCraft translates
- Menus:
crates/ui-egui/src/i18n.rs, one catalog per language keyed by(command, English label). A test (every_translation_key_exists_in_the_actual_menu_tree) fails if any fixed menu entry is untranslated or a row is stale, so every catalog covers all 618 fixed entries. The generated Effect menu is not part of that fixed tree: its entries and category submenus take their labels from the effect catalog below. - Panels, dialogs, buttons, tooltips:
crates/ui-egui/src/i18n/ui.rs, keyed by the English source string, with English fallback. Catalogs exist for Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Ukrainian and Czech. - Effect names:
crates/ui-egui/src/i18n/effects.rs, keyed by effect id, in Simplified Chinese (306 rows, one per effect in the registry, plus its 21 categories). The registry's English name stays the effect's identity:effect.list,effect.apply {"effect": …}, scripts and expressions match on it, and the property tree stores it as the effect group's name. Only the drawing — the Effect menu, Effect Controls, the Timeline and Effects & Presets — goes through the catalog, so a project file is identical whichever interface language opens it. A repeat (Gaussian Blur 2) keeps the index the engine appends, and a group the user renamed in Effect Controls stays verbatim. Adding a language there is two tables and one arm, and no panel changes: Traditional Chinese and Japanese have their tables in place and empty, so those languages draw English until a translator fills them (the Japanese set for #821 is what that slot is for). Each language decides for itself which names stay English — Adobe's Japanese interface leaves theCC,VRandOCIOsets in English while its Chinese one translates them — so a row repeating the English name is a choice, not a missing row. - Not translated anywhere yet: effect parameter names (≈ 1,650,
crates/effects), engine-generated text (property names, errors, undo labels), the Home screen's unwrapped literals (#574), Learn tutorials and documentation. - Language choice: Settings ▸ General ▸ Language, or Match System
(
match_system_uses_the_system_language_where_there_is_a_catalog). - Fonts: no bundled CJK font; the UI installs system fallbacks probed by script (Kana, Han,
Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam,
Thai:
crates/ui-egui/src/theme.rs). There is no Hangul probe, so Korean renders as boxes on macOS (#599). The web build has no system fonts. - Script support in the interface: egui draws text without complex shaping or right-to-left
layout, so an Arabic or Hindi interface would render unshaped and left to right. In text
layers (
crates/text) shaping (harfrust), bidi (UAX #9), vertical text and Tate-Chu-Yoko work; text-layer typing goes through the IME (viewer_text.rshandles preedit and commit).
Measurement
Measured 10 October 2026 at origin/main 1446e27 by counting catalog rows. The denominator,
≈ 3,900 user-visible strings, is estimated: 618 fixed menu entries + ≈ 1,320 capitalised UI
literals in crates/ui-egui/src outside tests and catalogs (a regex count, so an upper bound) +
≈ 1,650 distinct effect parameter names + 306 effect names. Engine messages are not counted, so
the true percentages are slightly lower.
| Language | Code | UI strings translated | Dialogs / tooltips / help | Script support | Native review | Status | To full |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | en |
≈ 3,900 (100%, source) | All; docs in English | — | yes | full | — |
| Simplified Chinese | zh-hans |
1,081 (≈ 28%): menus 618/618, panels 463 | Panels and dialogs partly (≈ 35% of panel strings); no help, effect names translated (306) and their parameter names not; 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 |
| Spanish | es |
618 (≈ 16%) | Menus only | Latin, fine | no | menus only | 7–10 h + review |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| French | fr |
0 | — | Latin, fine | no | none | 8–12 h + review |
| Portuguese (Brazil) | pt-br |
618 (≈ 16%) | Menus only | Latin, fine | no | menus only | 7–10 h + review |
| Indonesian | id |
0 | — | Latin, fine | no | none (After Effects: none) | 8–12 h + review |
| 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 |
| German | de |
0 | — | Latin, fine | no | none | 8–12 h + review |
| Korean | ko |
0 | — | No Hangul fallback probe: boxes on macOS (#599) | no | none | 9–13 h + review |
| Vietnamese | vi |
0 | — | Latin with stacked diacritics; untested | no | none (After Effects: none) | 8–12 h + review |
Other languages EffectCraft ships (3):
| Language | Code | UI strings translated | Status | To full |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | zh-hant |
1,081 (≈ 28%): menus 618/618, panels 463 | partial | 6–9 h + review |
| Ukrainian | uk |
1,113 (≈ 29%): menus 618/618, panels 495/496 | partial | 6–9 h + review |
| 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 |
After Effects also ships Italian and Russian, which EffectCraft does not (8–12 h each).
Overall: ≈ 12%, the average coverage of After Effects' 10 non-English languages (Simplified and Traditional Chinese 28%, Japanese 26%, Spanish and Portuguese 16%, French, German, Korean, Italian and Russian 0%). This is the localization row in target-app-parity.md.
Effort. One-time work first: route parameter names and engine messages through a catalog, wrap the remaining panel literals, and add a Hangul probe (10–20 h). Then each language needs ≈ 2,900 more strings (≈ 5–9 h per language at the pace of #398 and #401). Parity with After Effects' 10 non-English languages: ≈ 60–110 h; the four extra languages of the standard list (Hindi, Arabic, Indonesian, Vietnamese) add ≈ 50–80 h, most of it right-to-left layout and complex shaping in the interface. Every language needs native-speaker review, which only a human can give; none has had it.
Revision history
| Date | Change | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 2026-10-13 | minor | Effect names and the generated Effect menu leave English: i18n/effects.rs adds 306 rows keyed by effect id (Simplified Chinese, from After Effects 2026's interface and Adobe's Chinese documentation for the CC series) and the 21 category names. Parameter names are still English; no other language has rows |