effectcraft/docs/localization-parity.md

Localization parity

Last reviewed: 2026-10-12 · Last updated: 2026-10-12 · Change: minor (catalogs recounted at upstream/main 470ea7a3: menus in 10 languages, panels in 6, Hangul probe (#599)) · 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 fixed entries (624 catalog rows each at 470ea7a3, counted). 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 (410 rows), Simplified and Traditional Chinese (506 each), Ukrainian (505), Brazilian Portuguese (400) and Czech (501); counted at 470ea7a3.
• 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 the CC, VR and OCIO sets 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 and Hangul: crates/ui-egui/src/theme.rs; the Hangul probe was added for #599, closed). 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.rs handles preedit and commit).

Measurement

Measured 10 October 2026 at origin/main 1446e27 and recounted on 12 October at upstream/main 470ea7a3 by counting catalog rows (const tables in crates/ui-egui/src/i18n.rs and i18n/ui.rs; menu rows 624 per language, so the share is computed from 624 rather than 618). The denominator, ≈ 3,900 user-visible strings, was estimated on 10 October and is kept: 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	1,130 (≈ 29%): menus 624 rows, panels 506	Panels and dialogs partly; no help, effect names translated (306) and their parameter names not; Home screen literals unwrapped (#574, closed)	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	624 (≈ 16%)	Menus only (panel catalog in open PR #996)	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	624 (≈ 16%)	Menus only	Latin, fine	no	menus only	7–10 h + review
Portuguese (Brazil)	pt-br	1,024 (≈ 26%): menus 624 rows, panels 400	Panels and dialogs partly	Latin, fine	no	partial	6–9 h + review
Indonesian	id	0	—	Latin, fine	no	none (After Effects: none)	8–12 h + review
Japanese	ja	1,034 (≈ 27%): menus 624 rows, panels 410	Panels and dialogs partly	Japanese system fallback; vertical text and Tate-Chu-Yoko in text layers; IME	no	partial	6–9 h + review
German	de	624 (≈ 16%)	Menus only (open PR #666 adds interface translations)	Latin, fine	no	menus only	7–10 h + review
Korean	ko	0	—	Hangul fallback probe added (#599, closed); not checked on macOS here	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	1,130 (≈ 29%): menus 624 rows, panels 506	partial	6–9 h + review
Ukrainian	uk	1,129 (≈ 29%): menus 624 rows, panels 505	partial	6–9 h + review
Czech	cs	1,125 (≈ 29%): menus 624 rows, panels 501	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

Russian (ru) has a menu catalog (624 rows, ≈ 16%); After Effects also ships Italian, which EffectCraft does not (8–12 h).

Overall: ≈ 18%, the average coverage of After Effects' 10 non-English languages (Simplified and Traditional Chinese 29%, Japanese 27%, Brazilian Portuguese 26%, Spanish, French, German and Russian 16%, Korean and Italian 0%; 175 / 10, was ≈ 12% on 10 October). 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
2026-10-12	minor	Recounted: Russian, French, German and Czech menus (#873, #987), Brazilian Portuguese and Czech panels (#830, #987), Hangul probe (#599); overall ≈ 12% to ≈ 18%; Korean and Italian still absent
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