Translations

Theme localization guide.

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The built-in themes that are included with MkDocs provide support for translations. This is a guide for translators, which documents the process for contributing new translations and/or updating existing translations. For guidance on modifying the existing themes, see the Contributing Guide. To enable a specific translation see the documentation about the specific theme you are using in the User Guide. For translations of third-party themes, please see the documentation for those themes. For a third-party theme to make use of MkDocs' translation tools and methods, that theme must be properly configured to make use of those tools.

Localization tooling prerequisites

Theme localization makes use of the babel project for generation and compilation of localization files. You will need to be working from the git working tree on your local machine to make use of the translation commands.

See the Contributing Guide for direction on how to Install for Development and Submit a Pull Request. The instructions in this document assume that you are working from a properly configured development environment.

Make sure translation requirements are installed in your environment:

pip install 'mkdocs[i18n]'

Adding language translations to themes

If your favorite language locale is not yet supported on one (or both) of the built-in themes (mkdocs and readthedocs), you can easily contribute a translation by following the steps below.

Here is a quick summary of what you'll need to do:

1. Fork and clone the MkDocs repository and then install MkDocs for development for adding and testing translations.
2. Initialize new localization catalogs for your language (if a translation for your locale already exists, follow the instructions for updating theme localization files instead).
3. Add a translation for every text placeholder in the localized catalogs.
4. Locally serve and test the translated themes for your language.
5. Update the documentation about supported translations for each translated theme.
6. Contribute your translation through a Pull Request.

Fork and clone the MkDocs repository

In the following steps you'll work with a fork of the MkDocs repository. Follow the instructions for forking and cloning the MkDocs repository.

To test the translations you also need to install MkDocs for development from your fork.

Initializing the localization catalogs

The templates for each theme contain text placeholders that have been extracted into a Portable Object Template (messages.pot) file, which is present in each theme's folder.

Initializing a catalog consists of running a command which will create a directory structure for your desired language and prepare a Portable Object (messages.po) file derived from the pot file of the theme.

Use the init_catalog command on each theme's directory and provide the appropriate language code (-l <language>).

The language code is almost always just two lowercase letters, such as sv, but in some cases it needs to be further disambiguated.

See:

• Already translated languages for built-in themes
• ISO 639 Language List
• Language subtag registry

In particular, the way to know that the pt language should be disambiguated as pt_PT and pt_BR is that the Language subtag registry page contains pt- if you search for it. Whereas sv should remain just sv, because that page does not contain sv-.

So, if we pick es (Spanish) as our example language code, to add a translation for it to both built-in themes, run these commands:

pybabel init --input-file mkdocs/themes/mkdocs/messages.pot --output-dir mkdocs/themes/mkdocs/locales -l es
pybabel init --input-file mkdocs/themes/readthedocs/messages.pot --output-dir mkdocs/themes/readthedocs/locales -l es

The above command will create a file structure as follows:

mkdocs/themes/mkdocs/locales
├── es
│   └── LC_MESSAGES
│       └── messages.po

You can now move on to the next step and add a translation for every text placeholder in the localized catalog.

Updating a theme translation

If a theme's messages.pot template file has been updated since the messages.po was last updated for your locale, follow the steps below to update the theme's messages.po file:

1. Update the theme's translation catalog to refresh the translatable text placeholders of each theme.
2. Translate the newly added translatable text placeholders on every messages.po catalog file language you can.
3. Locally serve and test the translated themes for your language.
4. Contribute your translation through a Pull Request.

Updating the translation catalogs

This step should be completed after a theme template have been updated for each language that you are comfortable contributing a translation for.

To update the fr translation catalog of both built-in themes, use the following commands:

pybabel update --ignore-obsolete --input-file mkdocs/themes/mkdocs/messages.pot --output-dir mkdocs/themes/mkdocs/locales -l fr
pybabel update --ignore-obsolete --input-file mkdocs/themes/readthedocs/messages.pot --output-dir mkdocs/themes/readthedocs/locales -l fr

You can now move on to the next step and add a translation for every updated text placeholder in the localized catalog.

Translating the MkDocs themes

Now that your localized messages.po files are ready, all you need to do is add a translation in each msgstr item for each msgid item in the file.

msgid "Next"
msgstr "Siguiente"

Once you have finished translating all of the terms listed in the po file, you'll want to test your localized theme.

Testing theme translations

To test a theme with translations, you need to first compile the messages.po files of your theme into messages.mo files. The following commands will compile the es translation for both built-in themes:

pybabel compile --statistics --directory mkdocs/themes/mkdocs/locales -l es
pybabel compile --statistics --directory mkdocs/themes/readthedocs/locales -l es

The above command results in the following file structure:

mkdocs/themes/mkdocs/locales
├── es
│   └── LC_MESSAGES
│       ├── messages.mo
│       └── messages.po

Note that the compiled messages.mo file was generated based on the messages.po file that you just edited.

Then modify the mkdocs.yml file at the root of the project to test the new and/or updated locale:

theme:
  name: mkdocs
  locale: es

Finally, run mkdocs serve to check out your new localized version of the theme.

Updating theme documentation

The page Choosing your theme updates by itself with all available locale options.

Contributing translations

It is now time for you to contribute your nice work to the project. Thank you!