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Localization using spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are one of the most common formats for localizing games. In Godot, spreadsheets are supported through the CSV format. This guide explains how to work with CSVs.

The CSV files must be saved with UTF-8 encoding without a byte order mark.

警告

By default, Microsoft Excel will always save CSV files with ANSI encoding rather than UTF-8. There is no built-in way to do this, but there are workarounds as described here.

We recommend using LibreOffice or Google Sheets instead.

Formatting

CSV files must be formatted as follows:

keys	<lang1>	<lang2>	<langN>
KEY1	string	string	string
KEY2	string	string	string
KEYN	string	string	string

The "lang" tags must represent a language, which must be one of the valid locales supported by the engine, or they must start with an underscore (_), which means the related column is served as comment and won't be imported. The KEY tags must be unique and represent a string universally. By convention, these are usually in uppercase to differentiate them from other strings. These keys will be replaced at runtime by the matching translated string. Note that the case is important: KEY1 and Key1 will be different keys. The top-left cell is ignored and can be left empty or having any content. Here's an example:

keys	en	es	ja
GREET	Hello, friend!	Hola, amigo!	こんにちは
ASK	How are you?	Cómo está?	元気ですか
BYE	Goodbye	Adiós	さようなら
QUOTE	"Hello" said the man.	"Hola" dijo el hombre.	「こんにちは」男は言いました

The same example is shown below as a comma-separated plain text file, which should be the result of editing the above in a spreadsheet. When editing the plain text version, be sure to enclose with double quotes any message that contains commas, line breaks or double quotes, so that commas are not parsed as delimiters, line breaks don't create new entries and double quotes are not parsed as enclosing characters. Be sure to escape any double quotes a message may contain by preceding them with another double quote. Alternatively, you can select another delimiter than comma in the import options.

keys,en,es,ja
GREET,"Hello, friend!","Hola, amigo!",こんにちは
ASK,How are you?,Cómo está?,元気ですか
BYE,Goodbye,Adiós,さようなら
QUOTE,"""Hello"" said the man.","""Hola"" dijo el hombre.",「こんにちは」男は言いました

Specifying plural forms

Since Godot 4.6, it is possible to specify plural forms in CSV files.

This is done by adding a column named ?plural anywhere in the table (except on the first column, which is reserved for translation keys). By convention, it's recommended to place it on the second column. Note that in the example below, the key column is the one that contains English localization.

en,?plural,fr,ru,ja,zh
?pluralrule,,nplurals=2; plural=(n >= 2);,,
There is %d apple,There are %d apples,Il y a %d pomme,Есть %d яблоко,リンゴが%d個あります,那里有%d个苹果
,,Il y a %d pommes,Есть %d яблока,,
,,,Есть %d яблок,,

备注

Automatic Control translation is not supported when using plural forms. You must translate the string manually using tr_n().

Specifying translation contexts

Since Godot 4.6, it is possible to specify translation contexts in CSV files. This can be used to disambiguate identical source strings that have different meanings. While this is generally not needed when using translation keys LIKE_THIS, it's useful when using plain English text as translation keys.

This is done by adding a column named ?context column anywhere in the table (except on the first column, which is reserved for translation keys). By convention, it's recommended to place it on the second column, or after ?plural if it's also used. Note that in the example below, the key column is the one that contains English localization.

en,?context,fr,ru,ja,zh
Letter,Alphabet,Lettre,Буква,字母,字母
Letter,Message,Courrier,Письмо,手紙,信件

备注

Automatic Control translation is not supported when using context. You must translate the string manually using tr() or tr_n().

CSV importer

Godot will treat CSV files as translations by default. It will import them and generate one or more compressed translation resource files next to it.

Importing will also add the translation to the list of translations to load when the game runs, specified in project.godot (or the project settings). Godot allows loading and removing translations at runtime as well.

Select the .csv file and access the Import dock to define import options. You can toggle the compression of the imported translations, and select the delimiter to use when parsing the CSV file.

Be sure to click Reimport after any change to these options.

Loading the CSV file as a translation

Once a CSV file is imported, it is not automatically registered as a translation source for the project. Remember to follow the steps described in Configuring the imported translation so that the translation is actually used when running the project.