With freeShop 2.1, users can select translations and it will optionally auto-detect console system language. I'm make this thread specifically for some slight organization in getting help from people who want to assist in translating.
1. What you need to help
2. Current progress
● Finished
● Needs reviewing - is finished but needs a second person to double-check it.
● Needs updating - lines were changed or added and they need to be translated again.
● Doesn't exist
System languages
These languages are recognized internally. They are compatible with "Auto-detect".
Note: Chinese/Korean fonts don't exist on USA/EUR/JPN region consoles, at least not completely. I'm unsure how to approach/test those. Let me know if you have a console from China or Korea.
● Japanese
● French
● German
● Italian
● Spanish (US)
● Spanish (ES)
● Simplified Chinese
● Korean
● Dutch
● Portuguese (BR)
● Portuguese (PT)
● Russian
● Traditional Chinese
Other languages
If you natively speak another language and want to make a translation file for it, it can also be listed on freeShop but cannot be auto-detected obviously. You just need to make sure the 3DS has the necessary font.
● Hungarian
● Romanian
● Greek
● Turkish
3. Translation process
Technical format details
The translation file format is non-standard unfortunately. I created it, but it's pretty simple. Few things to keep in mind:
Getting started
Translating in-progress
If you're wanting to help with any of these language, you may want to contact the individuals below who have started on some already:
Nobody currently
Credits and Contributor List
Thanks to everyone listed as well as other minor contributors not listed.
1. What you need to help
- Know English well.
- Know a non-English language well (preferably natively)
- Understand basic string formatting (i.e. \n, %d, %.1f, etc). You don't need to know details, just enough to properly preserve the formatting and utilize newlines when appropriate.
2. Current progress
● Finished
● Needs reviewing - is finished but needs a second person to double-check it.
● Needs updating - lines were changed or added and they need to be translated again.
● Doesn't exist
System languages
These languages are recognized internally. They are compatible with "Auto-detect".
Note: Chinese/Korean fonts don't exist on USA/EUR/JPN region consoles, at least not completely. I'm unsure how to approach/test those. Let me know if you have a console from China or Korea.
● Japanese
● French
● German
● Italian
● Spanish (US)
● Spanish (ES)
● Simplified Chinese
● Korean
● Dutch
● Portuguese (BR)
● Portuguese (PT)
● Russian
● Traditional Chinese
Other languages
If you natively speak another language and want to make a translation file for it, it can also be listed on freeShop but cannot be auto-detected obviously. You just need to make sure the 3DS has the necessary font.
● Hungarian
● Romanian
● Greek
● Turkish
3. Translation process
Technical format details
The translation file format is non-standard unfortunately. I created it, but it's pretty simple. Few things to keep in mind:
- File must use UTF8 encoding. Good text editors will maintain and control this.
- Should use Unix style LF newlines and not CRLF like Windows often uses. If your newlines have a weird block or question mark symbol in freeShop, you fucked up.
- # character is used for comments, but it must be the first character in the line. Nothing fancy.
- White space is significant. "Queued: " is distinct from "Queued:"
Getting started
- Grab a currently complete translation file and copy it. Since I will be personally looking after it, portuguese will probably always be up-to-date.
- After you translate it, completely or partially, you can save it as sdmc:/3ds/data/freeShop/override.lang to test it out. While that file exists, it will ignore all language settings and only use that translation file.
- You won't be able to test out all messages, many are only displayed when hitting unusual errors. But make sure you test out all the main ones to make sure they fit. Some are long and need you to manually insert "\n" in order to wrap it nicely.
- When done, you can post it on this thread (use pastebin) and have other people review it and such. But preferably, if you know how to use Github and make PRs, you can do the following:
- Clone the repo
- Save your new translation file to this directory.
- If you're working with a system language: make sure you use a filename like en.lang (which is for English). Check here to see which letters to use in the name.
- If you're working on a non-system language: use another name, more than 2 characters, that's all lowercase (i.e. klingon.lang).
- Make the PR for review.
Translating in-progress
If you're wanting to help with any of these language, you may want to contact the individuals below who have started on some already:
Nobody currently
Credits and Contributor List
Thanks to everyone listed as well as other minor contributors not listed.

Last edited by TheCruel,