wordcraft/docs/localization-parity.md

Localization parity with Microsoft Word

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-11 · Change: minor (Italian interface, #594; previously minor: font list shows fonts by their names in the interface language, #505; previously minor: Turkish interface added; previously major: first version; catalogs measured from crates/ui-egui/src/i18n, Word's languages from its bundle listing) · Target: Microsoft Word (Microsoft 365) for Mac 16.113.4

Interface languages, script support and proofing per language. How translation works (catalog format, adding a language, clean-room rule): crates/ui-egui/src/i18n/mod.rs.

Dimension: ~25% (estimated), 80–130 h to full for the twelve key languages plus ~50 h for the other ~18 languages Word ships, plus native-speaker review (human).

What Word ships (measured by listing the bundle)

• 30 interface languages (31 .lproj folders incl. Base): ar, cs, da, de, el, en, en-GB, es, es-MX, fi, fr, fr-CA, he, hu, id, it, ja, ko, nl, no, pl, pt (BR), pt-PT, ru, sk, sv, th, tr, zh-CN, zh-TW. Arabic and Hebrew get a mirrored interface. No Hindi or Vietnamese interface on Mac.
• 120 proofing tools (SharedSupport/Proofing Tools): spellers for ~50 languages, grammar checkers for ~20, hyphenators for ~16, thesauri for ~20.

What WordCraft ships (measured)

• 13 interface languages: English plus zh-hans, zh-hant, ja, uk, es, pt-br, Serbian sr/sr-latn (#250), Estonian et, Turkish tr, Russian ru and Italian it (#594). Catalogs have 2,021–2,399 entries each. A test (every_tab_and_command_is_translated) enforces that every ribbon tab, command label and ribbon location is translated in every language.
• Of the 675 English strings a scan extracts from tl!(…) calls and command labels/locations, each catalog covers 661 (98%). Some newer dialog and pane strings (Equation tab tooltips, Zotero, Read Aloud, Backstage greetings) aren't wrapped in tl! yet, so they show in English in every language: the true share of visible strings is ~93–95% (estimated).
• Pending PRs: German (#203), Norwegian Bokmål (#208) and Nynorsk (#210), Hebrew with RTL (#20).
• Proofing: English only (one dictionary, rule-based grammar, English hyphenation patterns).
• Document scripts: shaping via HarfRust (HarfBuzz port) for every script; bidi (UAX #9) and Arabic shaping tested (#207); IME on all desktop platforms (winit fixes pending, #155–#164).

The twelve key languages

Status: full = every user-visible string translated and the script renders and edits correctly; partial; menus only; none. Hours are to full, Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock, excluding the shared items below.

Language	Code	UI strings translated	Dialogs / tooltips / help	Script support	Native review	Status	Hours to full
English	en	source (100%)	✅	Latin ✅	yes	full	0
Simplified Chinese (Mandarin)	zh-hans	929 entries; 98% of extracted, ~95% of visible	most; newer panes English	CJK ✅, IME ✅; Windows UI font fixed (#248); interface font chain covers every catalog character, installed CJK font after the embedded ones when it doesn't, PingFang found on macOS 12 (#486); font list by Chinese names (宋体, 微软雅黑, #505); no vertical text	no	partial	3–5
Spanish	es	~930; 98% / ~95%	most	Latin ✅	no	partial	1–2
Hindi	hi	0	❌	Devanagari shaping via HarfRust, untested; no hyphenation	no	none	4–6
Arabic	ar	0	❌	shaping, joining, lam-alef, bidi ✅ (#207); no kashida; no mirrored UI	no	none	6–8
French	fr	0	❌	Latin ✅	no	none	3–4
Portuguese	pt-br (pt-PT none)	~930; 98% / ~95% (pt-BR)	most	Latin ✅	no	partial	2–4 (pt-BR finish + pt-PT)
Indonesian	id	0	❌	Latin ✅	no	none	3–4
Japanese	ja	~930; 98% / ~95%	most	CJK ✅, IME ✅; no vertical text, ruby or document grid	no	partial	3–5
German	de	0 (PR #203 open)	❌	Latin ✅	no	none	1–2
Korean	ko	0	❌	Hangul ✅; macOS Korean IME fixes pending (#163, #164)	no	none	3–5
Vietnamese	vi	0	❌	Latin with stacked diacritics, untested	no	none	3–4

Other shipped languages: 8 — Traditional Chinese (zh-hant), Ukrainian (uk), Serbian Cyrillic and Latin (sr, sr-latn, #250), Estonian (et), Turkish (tr), Russian (ru) and Italian (it, #594), all partial. Estonian uses the existing fonts, follows et-EE system locales, and is available in Options or through ui.language with {"value":"et"}. Its 1,307 entries cover the existing interface catalog. Estonian spelling, grammar, dates and document templates are not added by the interface catalog. Turkish works the same way (tr-TR and tr-CY system locales, {"value":"tr"}) with all 1,307 entries. Command search folds the Turkish dotted and dotless I (italik finds İtalik, YAZI TİPİ finds Yazı Tipi) while English labels and ASCII command ids keep their usual matching. Turkish proofing is not included; terminology and checks: localization-tr.md.

Italian (it, #594) follows it, it-IT and it-CH system locales. Its catalog has every key of the others plus 51 strings that are wrapped in tl! but were in no catalog yet (File › Info properties, the File › Home greeting, list levels, Equation tab gallery and tooltips). Ribbon tabs, groups and command names use the names Italian Word users know (feature names, as AGENTS.md allows); all other text is written from the meaning of the English. No Italian proofing yet.

Shared work (not in the per-language hours)

Item	Hours	Notes
Wrap the remaining English literals in tl! and translate them in every catalog	4–6	Makes the six partial languages full except script items
Mirrored (right-to-left) interface for Arabic and Hebrew	15–25	Ribbon, panes, dialogs, rulers
Vertical text, ruby, document grid (Chinese, Japanese, Korean)	counted in layout-parity.md
Proofing dictionaries, grammar and hyphenation for the 11 non-English key languages	25–45	Open dictionaries only (licence check per dictionary); issues #25, #40, #100
Native-speaker review of every catalog	human	None reviewed yet

Revision history

Date	Change	Summary
2026-10-11	minor	Italian interface catalog (#594), locale selection, saved preference and font coverage checks; count labels put the noun first so they read right at 1
2026-10-11	minor	Font dialog sets the Asian text font (w:eastAsia) and the Latin text font separately; the Asian list holds the installed Chinese, Japanese and Korean fonts by their interface-language names (#505)
2026-10-11	minor	Font list shows installed fonts by their names in the interface language (宋体 for SimSun in Chinese, Japanese and Korean names likewise) and finds them by either name; a Chinese, Japanese or Korean font is stored as w:eastAsia too (#505)
2026-10-11	minor	Chinese/Japanese interface fonts: a test checks every catalog character has a glyph; an installed CJK font follows the embedded faces whenever they miss one; macOS font asset folders searched for PingFang (#486)
2026-10-10	minor	Russian interface (#300; 1,524 entries, built-in style names shown translated; covers everything the interface audit finds)
2026-10-11	minor	Turkish interface catalog (1,307 entries), locale selection, saved preference, Turkish casing in command search and font coverage checks; catalog sizes re-counted
2026-10-11	trivial	English spelling (#520): our supplement assets/spelling/en-extra.txt adds ~220 common modern words the Moby list lacks ("desktop", "download", "email"…)
2026-10-10	minor	Estonian interface catalog, locale selection, saved preference and font coverage checks; count labels put the noun first so they read right at 1
2026-10-10	minor	Serbian (Cyrillic and Latin) interface merged (#250)
2026-10-10	major	First version: twelve-language table, catalog coverage measured, Word's 30 UI languages and 120 proofing tools listed