Setting the UI language

You can change the language of the editor’s UI. On top of 41 fully translated languages (including 38 professional translations), there are many other languages covered by community translators.

# Demo

See the demo of the editor in Spanish:

# Right–to–left (RTL) languages support

CKEditor 5 supports right–to–left languages out–of–the–box. When one of RTL languages is used, the WYSIWYG editor adapts its UI for the best editing experience, for instance, mirroring various elements like toolbars, dropdowns, buttons, etc.

# Demo

See the demo of the editor in Arabic:

We are doing our best to deliver the best RTL support to our users and we constantly improve the editor. Check out the RTL support issue on GitHub to learn more and stay up–to–date. Your feedback is much appreciated!

# Loading additional languages from CDN, npm, and a zip file

By default, the editor will display in American English. This is the language built into the ckeditor.js files. To change the language of the editor UI, you need to load additional language file(s). Check out the following sections to see how to do that:

• CDN,
• npm,
• Zip download.

Next, you can configure the editor to use the chosen language:

ClassicEditor
    .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
        // The language code is defined in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-1 standard.
        language: 'es'
    } )
    .then( editor => {
        console.log( editor );
    } )
    .catch( error => {
        console.error( error );
    } );

# CDN

To use a different language than the default one (English), you need to load the editor together with the preferred language:

<script src="https://cdn.ckeditor.com/ckeditor5/[version.number]/[distribution]/ckeditor.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.ckeditor.com/ckeditor5/[version.number]/[distribution]/translations/[lang].js"></script>

For example:

<script src="https://cdn.ckeditor.com/ckeditor5/41.3.1/classic/ckeditor.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.ckeditor.com/ckeditor5/41.3.1/classic/translations/de.js"></script>

See the CDN installation guide for more information.

# npm

After installing the build from npm, languages will be available in node_modules/@ckeditor/ckeditor5-build-[name]/build/translations/[lang].js.

You can load a single language directly to your code by importing, for example, '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-build-classic/build/translations/de.js'.

See the npm installation guide for more information.

# Zip

All additional languages are included in the .zip file. You need to include the ckeditor.js file together with the chosen language file:

<script src="[ckeditor-path]/ckeditor.js"></script>
<script src="[ckeditor-path]/translations/de.js"></script>

See the zip installation guide for more information.

# Building the editor using a specific language

Currently, it is possible to change the UI language at the build stage and after the build. A single build of the editor supports the language which was defined in the CKEditor 5 translations plugin’s configuration. Check the whole translation process to see how you can change the language later.

If you use one of the predefined editor builds, refer to Creating custom builds to learn how to change the language of your build.

If you build CKEditor 5 from scratch or integrate it directly into your application, then all you need to do is to:

1. Install the @ckeditor/ckeditor5-dev-translations package:

   npm install --save @ckeditor/ckeditor5-dev-translations
   

2. Add it to your webpack configuration:

   Note: The language code is defined in the ISO 639–1 standard.

   const { CKEditorTranslationsPlugin } = require( '@ckeditor/ckeditor5-dev-translations' );
   
   module.exports = {
       // Define webpack plugins.
       // ...
   
       plugins: [
           new CKEditorTranslationsPlugin( {
               // The main language that will be built into the main bundle.
               language: 'en',
   
               // Additional languages that will be emitted to the `outputDirectory`.
               // This option can be set to an array of language codes or `'all'` to build all found languages.
               // The bundle is optimized for one language when this option is omitted.
               additionalLanguages: 'all',
   
               // For more advanced options see https://github.com/ckeditor/ckeditor5-dev/tree/master/packages/ckeditor5-dev-translations.
           } ),
   
           // Other webpack plugins.
           // ...
       ]
   
       // Remaining webpack configuration.
       // ...
   }
   

3. Run webpack. The CKEditor 5 plugin for webpack will emit additional files for each language specified in the additionalLanguages option. They will contain translations for messages from the t() function calls. The files will be created in the translations directory (or another one if the outputDirectory option is specified). Translations from the language specified in the language option will be automatically included in the build.

4. If you want to change the language after the build ends, you will need to edit the index.html file, add the translation file, and set the UI language to the target one.

   <script src="../build/ckeditor.js"></script>
   <script src="../build/translations/de.js"></script>
   <script>
       ClassicEditor
           .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
               language: 'de'
           } )
           .then( editor => {
               window.editor = editor;
           } )
           .catch( err => {
               console.error( err.stack );
           } );
   </script>
   

# Setting the language of the content

In CKEditor 5 you can separately configure the language of the UI and the language of the content. This means you can use the English UI of the editor but type your content in Arabic or Hebrew. The language of the content has an impact on the editing experience, for instance it affects screen readers and spell checkers. It is also particularly useful for typing in certain languages (like right–to–left ones) because it changes the default alignment of the text.

Configure config.language to change the language of the content. In this example, the UI of the editor will be in English but the content will be in Arabic:

ClassicEditor
    .create( document.querySelector( '#editor' ), {
        language: {
            // The UI will be English.
            ui: 'en',

            // But the content will be edited in Arabic.
            content: 'ar'
        }
    } )
    .then( editor => {
        window.editor = editor;
    } )
    .catch( err => {
        console.error( err.stack );
    } );

# Demo

# List of available professional translations

Arabic	Bengali	Bulgarian	Catalan
Chinese (China)	Chinese (Taiwan)	Czech	Danish
Dutch	English (American)	Estonian	Finnish
French	German	Greek	Hebrew
Hindi	Hungarian	Indonesian	Italian
Japanese	Korean	Latvian	Lithuanian
Malay	Norwegian	Polish	Portuguese (Brazilian)
Portuguese	Romanian	Russian	Serbian
Slovak	Spanish	Swedish	Thai
Turkish	Ukrainian	Vietnamese

There are community translations available for Australian and British variations of English, too, as well as various others.

# Related features

CKEditor 5 has other features that will help you control the content language:

• Text part Language – Set the language of the selected content part to support multilingual texts.

# Contribute

The source code of the feature is available on GitHub at https://github.com/ckeditor/ckeditor5-dev/tree/master/packages/ckeditor5-dev-translations.