We've received many requests over the years about making itch.io available in new languages, either because someone would like to use the site in their own language, or they'd like to introduce others to the platform who don't speak English. I'm happy to announce that we're finally kicking off our translation project (and we're already off to a great start).

Join the project here

itch.io was initially built as an English website. Whenever someone asked for language support we would enthusiastically say "Yes we want that," but know inside it would be quite a challenge. For this project we have to go to every page on itch.io (there are a lot!), extract English text, and format it for translators to work with. As of last week we've started doing this. We're using the foundation set up for the app translation project plus new tooling and tests to make the entire process as smooth as possible. We'll be incrementally extracting text from various parts of the site over the next few months, making that text available for translations as soon as it's extracted.

Community translation

We've decided to focus on community translation initially to let people give itch.io support for any language of their choosing. We're using the opensource project Weblate to facilitate translations and reviews. We already have approved translators for many languages who can help with suggestions and approve translations directly.

If you'd like to participate with translating please check out our introduction topic here and consider joining on channel on Discord.

The translation project is open source, you can view our progress on our GitHub repository. The translations will kept open under the MIT license.

Use a (partially) translated itch.io today

As translations are approved we'll be uploading them to the itch.io servers. This means you can already start using a partially translated itch.io that will gradually get more translated over time. There's a new section on your account settings for selecting your language:

Since translations are far from complete, we won't be automatically turning on a translation until we're comfortable with the amount of coverage. Your account setting will override any defaults we may set in the future, so feel free to lock in English if you don't want your browser's default getting in the way.

Progress

You can track our progress with this live updating image:

The percent represents how much of the extracted text has been translated. So a 100% does not mean the whole site is available. Many languages already have core flows available today, for example you can View a project, Buy it, then download it fully in Catalan. Many languages already support viewing games, downloading, and commenting on them.

How can I help?

If you'd like to translate, then head over to our translation topic

You can start testing existing translations to spot and report any issues. You can do this from Weblate or our Discord

Thanks for reading, and enjoy!