Help translate

PDF Studio ships in English, Spanish, German, and French — and every string in the app lives in a translation catalog, so adding your language is mostly a matter of translating text. No code changes needed.

The catalog

Each language is one JSON file:

src/locales/en/translation.json   ← English, the source of truth
src/locales/es/translation.json   ← Spanish
src/locales/de/translation.json   ← German
src/locales/fr/translation.json   ← French

The app bundles these files at build time: switching languages needs no network request and works fully offline — consistent with PDF Studio's privacy architecture.

Two ways to contribute

Crowdin (recommended, no code). Translations are managed in Crowdin — translate or vote on strings in your browser. Approved translations are pulled into the repo automatically.

Direct pull request. Copy src/locales/en/translation.json to src/locales/<your-code>/translation.json and translate every value:

• Keep every key byte-identical (including _one / _other plural forms).
• Keep every byte-identical — the app fills these in at runtime.
• Keep <b>, <code>, and <i> tags intact; they carry formatting.
• Don't translate brand names (PDF Studio, Reimagine), technical terms (AcroForm, OCR, AI, PDF, PNG), keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+S, Esc), or font names.
• Then register the language in src/i18n.ts (LANGUAGES).

Run npm test -- src/lib/i18n.test.ts before opening the PR: the catalog-completeness tests check your file key-for-key against English and fail on missing keys, empty strings, or dropped placeholders.

How language selection works

• The language picker in the top bar is always visible, with or without an open document.
• Your choice is saved on the device (pdfstudio-lang) and included in the one-click wipe, like every other PDF Studio preference.
• On first visit, the app follows your browser language when it's supported, and falls back to English otherwise.
• If a string is missing in your language, the English source shows instead of a blank or a raw key.